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‘* PEGGOTTY,’’ SAYS I, SUDDENLY, “‘WERE YOU EVER MARRIED?”’ 


FRontTIsPIEcCE—Dayid Copperfield, Vol. Two, Chapter I. 


THE WORKS 


OF 


CHARLES DICKENS 


VOLUME TWO 


WITH FULL-PAGE FRONTISPIECE AND 
TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS 


THE PERSONAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE OF 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 
THE YOUNGER 


(PART ONE) 


NEW YORK 
PETERALENELON COLLIER, PUBLISHER 








iS Volume Two 








DAVID COPPERFIELD 


(PARE OLE) 


CIST-OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


FRONTISPIECE—‘‘Peggotty,” says I, fuddenly, ‘“were you ever married?”’ 

“That’s not it?” said I, ‘‘that ship-looking thing?” 

‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?” I hinted, after a respectful pause 

We came at last to the five thousand cheeses 3 : 

I saw, to my amazement, Peggotty burst from a hedge and climb into the 
cart 4 é ; 

**He knows me, and I know him. Do you know me? Hey?” said Mr. 
Creakle . i 

**Let him deny it,” said Steerforth 

Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth boatmen” 

‘‘ Wather!’’ said Minnie, playfully, “‘what a porpoise you do grow!” 

I begin life on my own account, and don’t like it 

Mr. Micawber impressing the names of streets and the shapes of corner 
houses upon me as we went along, that I might find my way back easily 
in the morning 

I am presented to Mrs. Micawber 

The battle on the Green 

‘*Oh, thank you, Master Cees aad, * said Uriah ines 

The doctor’s walk 

“‘T ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins” 

Presently they brought her to the fireside, very much confused and very 
SD Vem 3 : : : : : : 

“ Mot! my dear Trot! I don’t know what I am to do He 

And Mrs. Crupp said, thank Heaven, she had now found summun she could 
care for! : ; 

Hamlet’s aunt betrays the family failing, and indulges ina soliloquy on 
“blood ” 3 

‘‘ Here are two pieces of furniture to commence with” 


Mr. Micawber in hiselement . 5 é : ms es oP 4 , 


PAGE 


40 
tt 


420 


442 
479 
492 











PREFACE 


I po not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this 
Book, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to 
_it with the composure which this formal heading would seem 
to require. My interest in it is so recent and strong, and 
my mind is so divided between pleasure and regret—pleasure 
in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation 
from many companions—that I am in danger of wearying 
the reader whom I love with personal confidences and private 
emotions. 

Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any 
purpose, I have endeavored to say in it. 

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how 
sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’ 
imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dis- 
missing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, 
when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from 
him forever. Yet, I have nothing else to tell, unless, indeed, 
I were to confess (which might be of. less moment still) that 
no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more 
than I have believed it in the writing. - 

So true are these avowals at the present day, that I 
can now only take the reader into one confidence more. 
Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily 
believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my 
_ fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dear- 
ly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have 
in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his name is 
Davip COPPERFIELD. 


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THE PERSONAL HISTORY AND 
EXPERIENCE OF 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 
THE YOUNGER 


CHAPTER ONE 
I AM BORN 


WHETHER I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, 
or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these 
pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of 
my life, I record that 1 was born (as I have been informed 
and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It 
was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began 
to cry, simultaneously. 

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was 
declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the 
neighborhood who had taken a lively interest in me several 
months before there was any possibility of our becoming 
personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky 
in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and 
spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they be- 
lieved, to all unlucky infants, of either gender, born ‘toward 
the small hours on a Friday night. 

I need say nothing here on the first head, because noth- 
ing can show better than my history whether that prediction 
was verified or falsified by the result. On the second branch 
of the question, I will only remark that unless I ran through 
that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, 1 have 


(7) 


8 Works of Charles Diekens 


not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having 
been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should 
be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to 
keep it. 

I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in 
the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether 
sea-going people were short of money about that time, or were 
short of faith and preferred cork-jackets, I don’t know; all I 
know is that there was but one solitary bidding, and that was 
from an attorney connected with the bill-broking business, 
who offered two pounds in cash, and the balance in sherry, 
but declined to be guaranteed from drowning on any higher 
bargain. Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at 
a dead loss—for as to sherry, my poor dear mother’s own 
sherry was in the market then—and ten years afterward the 
caul was put up in a raffle down in our part of the country, 
to fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend 
five shillings. Iwas present myself, and I remember to have 
felt quite uncomfortable and confused, at a part of myself 
being disposed of in that way. The caul was won, I recol- 
lect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, 
produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, 
and twopence halfpenny short—as it took an immense time 
and a great waste of arithmetic to endeavor without any 
effect to prove to her. It is a fact, which will be long re- 
membered as remarkable down there, that she was never 
drowned, but died triumphantly in bed at ninety-two. I 
have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast 
that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon 
a bridge, and that over her tea (to which she was extremely 
partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the im- 
piety of. mariners and others who had the presumption to go 
‘‘meandering’’ about the world. It was in vain to represent 
to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted 
from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with 
greater emphasis, and with an instinctive knowledge of the 
strength of her objection, ‘‘Let us have no meandering.”’ 


David Copperfield 9 


Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my 
birth. 

I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘‘thereby,’’ as 
they say in Scotland. 1 was a posthumous child. My 
father’s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six 
months when mine opened on it. There is something strange 
to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw me; and 
something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I 
have of my first childish associations with his white grave- 
stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion 1 
used to feel for it lying out alone there in-the dark night, 
when our little parlor was warm and bright with fire and 
candle, and the doors of our house were—almost cruelly, it 
seemed to me sometimes—bolted and locked against it. 

An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt 
of mine, of whom I shall have more to relate by-and-by, was 
the principal magnate of our family. Miss Trotwood, or 
Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called her, when 
she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable person- 
age to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been mar- 
ried to a husband younger than herself, who was very hand- 
some, except in the sense of the homely adage, ‘“‘handsome is 
that handsome does’’—for he was strongly suspected of hav- 
ing beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, ona disputed 


_ question of supplies, made some hasty but determined arrange- 


4 


ments to throw her out of atwo pair of stairs’ window. These 
evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey 
to pay him off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. 
He went to India with his capital, and there, according to 
a wild legend in our family, he was once seen riding on an 
elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think it must 
have been a Baboo—or a Begum. Anyhow, from India, 
tidings of his death reached home, within ten years. How 
they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon 
the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a 
cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, estab- 
lished herself there as a single woman with one servant, and 


10 Works of Charles Dickens 


was understood to live secluded, ever afterward, in an in- 
flexible retirement. 

My father had once been a favorite of hers, I believe; but 
she was mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground 
that my mother was ‘‘a wax doll.’”’ She had never seen my 
mother, but she knew her to be not yet'twenty. My father 
and Miss Betsey never met again. He-was double my mo- 
ther’s age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. 
He died a year afterward, and, as I have said, six months 
before I came into the world. 

This was the,state of matters on the afternoon of, what ° 
I may be excused for calling, that eventful and important 
Friday. I can make no claim therefore to have known, at 
that time, how matters stood; or to have any remembrance, 
founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what follows. 

My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health 
and very low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, and 
desponding heavily about herself and the fatherless little 
stranger, who was already welcomed by some grosses of 
prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at all 
excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was 
sitting by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very 
timid and sad, and very doubtful of ever coming alive out of 
the trial that was before her, when, lifting her eyes as she 
dried them, to the window opposite, she saw a strange lady 
coming up the garden. 

My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance 
that it was Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on 
the strange lady, over the garden-fence, and she came walk- 
ing up to the door with a fell rigidity of figure and com-~ 
posure of countenance that could have belonged to nobody 
else. 

When she reached the house, she gave another proof of 
her identity. My father had often hinted that she seldom 
conducted herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, in- 
stead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at that 
identical window, pressing the end of her nose against the 


David Copperfield Tt 


glass to that extent that my poor dear mother used to say 
it became perfectly flat and white in a moment. 

She gave my mother such a turn that | have always been 
~ convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born 
on a Friday. 

My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone 
behind it in the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the 
room, slowly and inquiringly, began on the other side, and 
carried her eyes on, like a Saracen’s Head in a Dutch clock, 
until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown and 
a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be 
obeyed, to come and open the door. My mother went. 

“Mrs. David Copperfield, 1 thank,’’ said Miss Betsey; the 
emphasis referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning weeds, 
and her condition. 

“*Yes,’’ said my mother, faintly. 

‘*Miss Trotwood,’’ said the visitor. ‘‘You have heard of 
her, I dare say ?”’ ‘ 

My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she 
had a disagreeable consciousness of not appearing to imply 
that it had been an overpowering pleasure. 

‘*Now you see her,’’ said Miss Betsey. My mother bent 
her head, and begged her to walk in. 

They went into the parlor my mother had come from, the 
fire in the best room on the other side of the passage not being 
lighted—not having been lighted, indeed, since my father’s 
funeral; and when they were both seated, and Miss Betsey 
said nothing, my mother, after vainly trying to restrain her- 
self, began to cry. 

“Oh, tut, tut, tut!’’ said Miss Betsey, in a liierre **Don’t 
do that! Come, come!”’ 

My mother couldn’t help it notwithstanding, so she cried 
until she had her cry out. 

‘‘Take off your cap, child,’’ said Miss Betsey, ‘‘and let 
me see you.”’ 

My mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compli- 
ance with this odd request, if she had any disposition to do 


12 Works of Charlies Dickens 


so. Therefore she did as she was told, and did it with such 
nervous hands that her hair (which was luxuriant and beau- 
tiful) fell all about her face. 

‘*Why, bless my heart!’’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘*You 
are a very Baby!’’ 

My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appear- 
ance even for her years; she hung her head, as if it were 
her fault, poor thing, and said, sobbing, that indeed she was 
afraid she was but a childish widow, and would be but a 
childish mother if she lived. In a short pause which ensued, 
she had a fancy that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair, and 
that with no ungentle hand; but looking at her, in her timid 
hope, she found that lady sitting with the skirt of her dress 
tucked up, her hands folded on one knee, and her feet upon 
the fender, frowning at the fire. 

‘‘In the name of Heaven,’’ said Miss Betsey, suddenly, 
‘‘why Rookery?’’ 

.““Do you mean the house, ma’am?’’ asked my mother. 

‘‘Why Rookery?’ said Miss Betsey. ‘‘Cookery would - 
have been more to the purpose, if you had had any practical 
ideas of life, either of you.”’ | 

‘‘The name was Mr. Copperfield’s choice,’’ returned my 
mother. ‘‘When he bought the house, he liked to think that 
there were rooks about it.”’ 

The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, 
among some tall old elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, 
that neither my mother nor Miss Betsey could forbear glanc- 
ing that way. As the elms bent to one another, like giants 
who were whispering secrets, and after a few seconds of 
such repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms 
about, as if their late confidences were really too wicked for 
their peace of mind, some weather-beaten ragged old rooks’ 
nests, burdening their higher branches, swung like wrecks 
upon a stormy sea. 

‘*Where are the birds?’’ asked Miss Betsey. 

‘‘The—’’ My mother had been thinking of something 
else. 


David Gopperfield 13 


*“The rooks—what has become of them?’’ asked Miss 
Betsey. | 

‘“There have not been any since we have lived here,’’ said 
my mother. ‘‘Wethought—Mr. Copperfield thought—it was 
quite a large rookery; but the nests were very old ones, and 
the birds have deserted them a long while.’’ 

‘**David Copperfield all over!’’ cried Miss Betsey. ‘‘ David 
Copperfield from head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when 
there’s not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust, be- 
cause he sees the nests!’ 

**Mr. Copperfield,’’ returned my mother, ‘‘is dead, and if 
you dare to speak unkindly of him to me—”’ 

My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary 
intention of committing an assault and battery upon my 
_ aunt, who could easily have settled her with one hand, even 
if my mother had been in far better training for such an 
encounter than she was that evening. But it passed with 
the action of rising from her chair; and she sat down again 
very meekly, and fainted. 

When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had re- 
stored her, whichever it was, she found the latter standing 
~ at the window. The twilight was by this time shading 
down into darkness; and dimly as they saw each other, they 
could not have done that without the aid of the fire. 

‘‘Well?’’ said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as 
if she had only been taking a casual look at the prospect; 
‘‘and when do you expect—’”’ 

‘‘1 am all in a tremble,’’ faltered my mother. ‘‘I don’t 
know what’s the mnatter. I shall die, 1 am sure!’’ 

‘‘No, no, no,’’ said Miss Betsey. ‘‘Have some tea.’’ 

‘“Oh, dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any 
good?’’ cried my mother in a helpless manner. 

‘‘Of course it will,’’ said Miss Betsey. ‘‘lt’s nothing but 
fancy. What do you call your girl?”’ 

*‘T don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ 
my mother, innocently. 

‘*Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously 


>] 


said 


14 ‘Works of Charles Dickens 


quoting the second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer 
upstairs, but applying it to my mother instead of me, ‘‘] 
don’t mean that. I mean your servant girl.”’ 

‘*Peggotty,’’ said my mother. 

‘*Pegootty!’’ repeated Miss Betsey, with some indigna- 


tion. ‘‘Do you mean to say, child, that any human being 
has gone into a Christian church and got herself named Peg- 
gotty?”’ 


‘‘It’s her surname,’’ said my mother, faintly. ‘‘Mr. Cop- 
perfield called her by it, because her Christian name was the 
same as mine.”’ 

‘‘Here! Peggotty!’’ cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlor 
door. ‘‘Tea. Your mistress is a little unwell. Don’t 
dawdle.’’ : 

Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as 
if she had been the recognized authority in the house ever 
since it had been a house, and having looked out to confront 
the amazed Peggotty coming along the passage with a candle, 
at the sound of a strange voice, Miss Betsey shut the door 
again, and sat down as before—with her feet on the fender, 
the skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands folded on one 
knee. 

‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’’ said Miss 
Betsey. ‘‘I have no doubt it will be a girl. I have a pre- 
sentinent that it must be a girl. Now, child, from the mo- 
ment of the birth of this girl—’’ 

‘‘Perhaps boy,’? my mother took the liberty of putting in. 

‘‘T tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,”’ 
returned Miss Betsey. ‘‘Don’t contradict. From the mo- 
ment of this girl’s birth, child, I intend to be her friend. I 
intend to be her godmother, and I beg you’ll call her Betsey 
Trotwood Copperfield. There must be no mistakes in life 
with this Betsey Trotwood. There must be no trifling with 
her affections, poor dear. She must be well brought up, and 
well guarded from reposing any foolish confidences where 
they are not deserved. I must make that my care.”’ 

There was a twitch of Miss Betsey’s head, after each of 


David @opperfield 15 


these sentences, as if her own old wrongs were working 
within her, and she repressed any plainer reference to them 
by strong constraint. So my mother suspected, at least, as 
she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire—too much 
scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too sub- 
dued and bewildered altogether, to observe anything very 
clearly, or to know what to say. 

‘And was David good to you, child?’’ asked Miss Betsey 
when she had been silent for a little while, and these motions 
of her head had gradually ceased. ‘‘Were you comfortable 
together?”’ 

‘‘We were very happy,’’ said my mother. ‘‘Mr. Copper- 
field was only too good to me.”’ 

‘What, he spoiled you, Isuppose?’’ returned Miss Betsey. 

‘‘Hor being quite alone and dependent on myself in this 
rough world again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’’ sobbed my 
mother. 

‘‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘‘You were not 
equally matched, child—if any two people can be equally 
matched—and so I asked the question. You were an orphan, 
weren’t you?”’ 

‘Vie. °* 

‘‘And a governess ?”’ 

‘“‘T was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copper- 
field came to visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, 
and took a great deal of notice of -me, and paid me a good 
deal of attention, and at last proposed to me. And I accepted 
him. And so we were married,’’ said my mother, simply. 

‘‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown 
still bent upon the fire. “Do you know anything?”’ 

‘‘T beg your pardon, ma’am,”’’ faltered my mother, 

‘¢ About keeping house, for instance,’’ said Miss Betsey. 

‘“Not much, I fear,’’ returned my mother, ‘‘Not so much 
as 1 could wish. But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me—”’ 

(‘‘Much he knew about it himself!’’) said Miss Betsey, in 
a parenthesis. 

“And I hope 1 should have improved, being very 


16 Works of Charles Dickens 


anxious to learn, and he very patient to teach, if the great 
misfortune of his death’’—my mother broke down again 
here, and could get no further. 

“‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. 

‘¢__T kept my housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced 
it with Mr. Copperfield every night,’’ cried my mother in 
another burst of distress, and breaking down again. 

‘‘Well, well!’’ said Miss Betsey. ‘‘Don’t cry any more ”’ 

‘‘__And I am sure we never had a word of difference re- 
specting it, except when Mr. Copperfield objected to my threes 
and fives being too much like each other, or to my putting 
curly tails to my sevens and nines,’’ resumed my mother in 
another burst, and breaking down again. 

‘‘You’ll make yourself ill,’’? said Miss Betsey, ‘‘and you 
know that will not be good either for you or for my god- 
daughter. Come! You mustn’t do it!’’ 

This argument had some share in quieting my mother, 
though her increasing indisposition perhaps had a larger one. 
There was an interval of silence, only broken by Miss Bet- 
sey’s occasionally ejaculating ‘‘Ha!’’ as she sat with her feet 
upon the fender. 

‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his 
money, I know,”’ said she, by-and-by. ‘‘ What did he do for 
you?”’ 

‘‘Mr. Copperfield,’’ said my mother, answering with some 
difficulty, ‘“was so considerate and good as to secure the re- 
version of a part of it to me.”’ 

‘*How much?’’ asked Miss Betsey. 

‘‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’’ said my mother. 

‘He might have done worse,’’ said my aunt. 

The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother 
was so much worse that Peggotty, coming in with the tea- 
board and candles, and seeing ata glance how ill she was—as 
Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there had been light 
enough—conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all 
speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her 
nephew, who had been for some days past secreted in the 


David Copperfield 17 


nouse, unknown to my mother, as a special messenger, in 
caserof emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor. 

Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when 
they arrived within a few minutes of each other, to find an 
unknown lady of portentous appearance sitting before the 
fire, with her bonnet tied over her left arm, stopping her ears 
with jewelers’ cotton. Peggotty knowing nothing about 
her, and my mother saying nothing about her, she was quite 
a mystery in the parlor; and the fact of her having a maga- 
zine of jewelers’ cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article 
in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity 
of her presence. 

The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, 
and having satisfied himself, 1 suppose, that there was a 
probability of this unknown lady and himself having to sit 
there, face to face, for some hours, laid himself out to be 
polite and social. He was the meekest of his sex, the mild- 
est of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to take up 
‘the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Ham- 
let, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, part- 
ly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest pro- 
pitiation of everybody else. It is nothing to say that he 
hadn’t a word to throw at a dog. He couldn’t have thrown 
a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him one gen- 
tly, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as 
slowly as he walked; but he wouldn’t have been rude to him, 
and he couldn’t have been quick with him, for any earthly 
consideration. 

Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt, with his head on 
one side, and making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the 
jewelers’ cotton, as he softly touched his left ear: 

~ “Some local irritation, ma’am?”’ 

‘‘What!’’ replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one 
ear like acork. | 

Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness —as he told 
my mother afterward—that it was a mercy he didn’t lose his 
presence of mind. But he repeated, sweetly: 


18 Works of Charles Diekens 


‘‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’’ 

‘‘Nonsense!’’ replied my aunt, and corked herself, again, 
at one blow. 

Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this but sit and look - 
at her feebly, as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was 
called upstairs again. After some quarter of an hour’s ab- 
sence he returned. 

‘‘Well?’’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear 
nearest to him. 

‘‘Well, ma’am,’’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘‘we are—we are 
progressing slowly, ma’am.”’ 

‘“Ya—a—ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the 
contemptuous interjection. And corked herself as before. 

Really —really—as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was 
almost shocked; speaking in a professional point of view 
alone he was almost shocked. But he sat and looked at her, 
notwithstanding, for nearly two hours, as she sat looking at 
the fire, until he was again called out. -After another ab- 
sence, he again returned. 

‘‘Well?’’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side 
again. 

‘Well, ma’am,’’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘‘we are—we are 
progressing slowly, ma’am.”’ 

‘“Ya—a—ah!’’ said my aunt. With such a snarl at him 
that Mr. Chillip absolutely could not bear it. It was really 
calculated to break his spirit, he said afterward, He pre- 
ferred to go and sit upon the stairs in the dark and a strong 
draught until he was again sent for. 

Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was 
a very dragon at his catechism, and who may therefore be 
regarded as a credible witness, reported next day that, hap- 
pening to peep in at the parlor door an hour after this, he 
was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to and 
fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before he could 
make his escape. That there were now occasional sounds of 
feet and voices overheard which he inferred the cotton did 
not exclude, from the circumstance of his evidently being 


David Gopperfield 1y 


clutched by the lady as a victim on whom to expend:-her su- 
perabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest. That, 
marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he 
had been taking too much laudanum) she, at those times, 
shook him, rumpled his hair, made light of his linen, stopped 
his ears as if she confounded them with her own, and other- 
wise touzled and maltreated him. This was in part con- 
firmed by his aunt, who saw him at half-past twelve o’clock, 
soon after his release, and affirmed ine he was then as red 
as l was. 

The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at 
such a time, if at any time. He sidled into the parlor as 
soon as he was at liberty, and said to my aunt in his meek- 
est manner: 

‘*Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’”’ 

‘“What upon?’’ said my aunt, sharply. 

Mr. Chillip was fluttered again by the extreme severity of 
my aunt’s manner; so he made her a little bow, and gave 
her a little smile to mollify her. 

‘‘Mercy on the man, what’s he doing!’’ cried my auut, 
impatiently. ‘‘Can’t he speak?’’ 

‘*Be calm, my dear ma’am,’’ said Mr. Chillip, in his 
softest accents. ‘‘There is Ne longer any occasion for un- 
easiness, ma’am. Be calm.’ 

It has since keen considered almost a miracle that my 
aunt didn’t shake him, and shake what he had to say out of . 
him. She only shook her own head at him, but in a way 
that made him st 

‘*Well, ma’am,’’ resumed Mr. ‘Chillip, as soon as he had 
courage, ‘‘l am happy to congratulate you. All is now 
over, ma’am, and well over.”’ } 

During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to 
the delivery of this ‘oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly. 

‘How is she?’’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her 
bonnet still tied on one of them. 

‘“Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I 
hope,’”’ returned Mr. Chillip. ‘‘Quite as comfortable as we 


20 Works of Charles Dickens 


can expect a young mother to be under these melancholy 
domestic circumstances. There cannot be any objection to 
your seeing her presently, ma’am. It may do her good.’’ 

‘‘And she. How is she?’’ said my aunt, sharply. 

Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and 
looked at my aunt like an amiable bird. 

‘*The baby,’’ said my aunt. ‘‘How is she?’’ 

‘‘Ma’am,’’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘‘1 apprehended you had 
known. It’s a boy.” 

My aunt never said ‘a word, but took her bonnet by the 
strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chil- 
lip’s head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and never 
came back. She vanished like a discontented fairy; or like 
one of those supernatural beings whom it was popularly 
supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any 
more. 

No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; 
but Betsey Trotwood Copperfield was forever in the land of 
dreams and shadows, the tremendous region whence I had 
so lately traveled; and the hight upon the window of our 
room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such travelers, 
and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was 
he, without whom I had never been. 


CHAPTER TWO 
I OBSERVE 


THE first objects that assume a distinct presence before 
me. as I look far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my 
mother with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peg- 
gotty with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed 
to darken their whole neighborhood in her face, and cheeks 
and arms so hard and red that 1 wondered the birds didn’t 
peck her in preference to apples. 


David Copperfield 31 


1 believe 1 can remember these two at a little distance 
apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on 
the floor, and I going unsteadily from one to the other. I 
have an impression on my mind, which I cannot distinguish 
from actual remembrance, of the touch of Peggotty’s fore- 
finger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being 
roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutineg-grater. 

This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most 
of us can go further back into such times than many of us 
suppose; just as 1 believe the power of observation in num- 
bers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its 
closeness and accuracy. Indeed, 1 think that most grown 
men who are remarkable in this respect_may, with greater 
propriety, be said not to have lost the faculty than to have 
acquired it; the rather, as 1 generally observe such men to 
retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of 
being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have pre- 
served from their childhood. 

1 might have a misgiving that I am ‘‘meandering’’ in 
stopping to say this, but that it brings me to remark that I 
build these conclusions in part upon my own experience of 
myself; and if it should appear from anything 1 may set 
down in this narrative that I was a child of close observa- 
tion, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my 
childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these 
characteristics. 

Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my in- 
fancy, the first objects 1 can remember, as standing out by 
themselves from a confusion of things, are my mother and 
Peggotty. What else do [ remember? Let me see. 

There comes out of the cloud our house—not new to me, 
but quite familiar in its earliest remembrance. On the 
‘ground-floor is Peggotty’s kitchen, opening into a back 
yard; with a pigeon-house on a pole in the center, without 
any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner, without 
any dog; and a quantity of fowls, that look terribly tall to 
me, walking about in a menacing and ferocious manner. 


22 Works of Charles Dickens 


There is one cock who gets upon a post to crow, and seems 
to take particular notice of me as 1 look at him through the 
kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so fierce. Of 
the geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after me 
with their long necks stretched out when I go that way, | 
dream at night—as a man environed by wild beasts might 
dream of lions. 

Here is a long passage—what an enormous perspective I 
make of it!—-leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front- 
door. A dark store-room opens out of it, and that is a place 
to be run past at night; for I don’t know what may be 
among those tubs and jars and old tea-chests, when there is 
nobody in there with a dimly-burning light, letting a mouldy 
air come out at the door in which there is the smell of soap, 
pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one whiff. Then 
there are the two parlors—the parlor in which we sit of an 
evening, my mother and I and Peggotty—for Peggotty is 
quite our companion, when her work is done and we are 
alone—and the best parlor where we sit on a Sunday; grand- 
ly, but not so comfortably. There is something of a doleful 
air about that room to me, for Peggotty has told me—lI don’t 
know when, but apparently ages ago—about my father’s 
funeral, and the company having their black cloaks put on. 
One Sunday night my mother reads to Peggotty and me in 
there how Lazarus was raised up from the dead. And Iam 
so frightened that they are afterward obliged to take-me out 
of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bed- 
room window, with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, 
below the solemn moon. 

There is nothing half so green that 1 know any nee as 
the grass of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its — 
trees; nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep 
are feeding there, when I kneel up, early in the morning, in 
my little bed in a closet within my mother’s room, to look 
out at it; and 1 see the red light shining on the sun-dial, 
and think within myself, ‘‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, 
that it can tell the time again?” © 


David Copperfield 23 


Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed 
pew! With a window near it, out of which our house can be 
seen, and 7s seen many times during the morning’s service, 
by Peggotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she can 
that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames. But though 
Peggotty’s eye wanders, she is much offended if mine does, 
and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat, that I am to look 
at the clergyman. But I can’t always look at him-—-I know 
him without that white thing on, and I am afraid of his 
wondering why I stare so, and perhaps stopping the service 
to inquire—and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful thing to 
gape, but 1 must do something. I look at my mother, but 
she pretends not to see me. I look ata boy in the aisle, and 
he makes faces at me. I look at the sunlight coming in at 
the open door through the porch, and there I see a stray 
sheep—I don’t mean a sinner, but mutton—half-making up 
his mind to come into the church. I feel that if I looked at 
him any longer I might be tempted to say something out 
loud; and what would become of me then! [I look up at the 
monumental tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. 
Bodgers, late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. 
Bodgers must have been, when afflictions sore, long time 
Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were in vain. I wonder 
whether they called in Mr. Chillip, and he was in vain; and 
if so, how he likes to be reminded of it once a week. I look 
from Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the pulpit; 
and think what a good place it would be to play in, and what 
a castle it would make, with another boy coming up the 
stairs to attack it, and having the velvet cushion with the 
tassels thrown down on his head. In time my eyes gradu- 
ally shut up; and, from seeming to hear the clergyman sing- 
ing a drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing until I fall off 
the seat with a crash, and am taken: out, more dead than 
alive, by Peggotty. 

And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed 
bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling 
air, and the ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm- 


24 Works of Charles Dickens 


trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now 1 am in the 
garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pig- 
eon-house and dog-kennel are—a very preserve of butterflies, 
as lremember it, with a high fence, and a gate and pad- 
lock; where the fruit clusters on the trees riper and richer 
than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and 
where my mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, 
bolting furtive gooseberries and trying to look unmoved. 
A great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment. 
We are playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the 
parlor. When my mother is out of breath and rests herself 
in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls 
round her fingers and straightening her waist, and nobody 
knows better than I do that she likes to look so well, and is 
proud of being so pretty. 

That is among my very earliest impressions. That, and 
a sense that we were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and 
submitted ourselves in most things to her direction, were 
among the first opinions—if they may be so called—that 1 
ever derived from what I saw. 

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlor fire 
alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I 
must have read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must 
have been deeply interested, for I renember she had a cloudy 
impression, after I had done, that they were a sort of vege- 
table. 1 was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but having 
leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home 
from spending the evening at a neighbor’s, 1 would rather 
have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to bed. 
I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed 
to swell and grow immensely large. I propped my eyelids 
open with my two forefingers, and looked perseveringly at 
her as she sat at work; at the little bit of wax-candle she 
kept for her thread—how old it looked, being so wrinkled in 
all directions!—at the little house with a thatched roof, 
where the yard-measure lived; at her work-box with a slid- 
ing lid, with a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral (with a pink 


David Gopperfield 25 


dome) painted on the top; at the brass thimble on her finger; 
at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so sleepy, that I 
knew if 1 lost sight of anything for a moment, I was gone. 

‘*Peggotty,’’ says I, suddenly, ‘‘were you ever married ?’’ 

‘‘Lord, Master Davy!’’ replied Peggotty. ‘‘What’s put 
marriage in your head!’’ 

She answered with such a start that it quite awoke me. 
And then she stopped in her work, and looked at me with 
her needle drawn out to its thread’s length. 

‘*But were you ever married, Peggotty?’’ says I. ‘‘You 
are a very handsome woman, an’t you?”’ 

I thought her in a different style from my mother, cer- 
tainly; but of another school of beauty, I considered her a 
perfect example. There was a red velvet footstool in the 
best parlor, on which my mother had painted a nosegay. 
The ground-work of that stool, and Peggotty’s complexion, 
appeared to me to be one and the same thing. The stool was 
smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that made no differ- 
ence. 

*“Me handsome, Davy!’’ said Peggotty. ‘‘Lawk, no, my 
dear! But what put marriage in your head?”’ 

**T don’t know!— You mustn’t marry more than one per- 
son at a time, may you, Peggotty?’’ 

‘*Certainly not,’’ says Peggotty, with the ‘promptest de- 
cision. 

‘*But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why 
then you may marry another person, mayn’t you, Peg- 
gotty?”’ 

“You MAY,’’ says Peggotty, ‘‘if you choose, my dear. 
That’s a matter of opinion.”’ 

‘**But what is your opinion, Peggotty?”’ said I. 

I asked her and looked curiously at her, because she 
looked so curiously at me. 

‘‘My opinion is,’’ said Peggotty, taking her eyes from 
me, after a little indecision, and going on with her work, 
‘‘that I never was married myself, Master Davy, and that I 
don’t expect to be. That’s all 1 know about the subject.”’ 


26 Works of Charlies Diekens 


‘“*You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?’’ said I, 
after sitting quiet for a minute. 

I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; 
but I was quite mistaken—for she laid aside her work (which. . 
was a stocking of her own) and opening her arms wide, took 
iny curly head within them, and gave it a good squeeze. I 
know it was a good squeeze, because, being very plump, 
whenever she made any little exertion after she was dressed, 
some of the buttons on the back of her gown flew off. And 
I recollect two bursting to the opposite side of the parlor 
while she was hugging me. 

‘‘Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,”’ 
said Peggotty, who was not quite right in the name yet, ‘‘for 
I an’t heard half enough.”’ 

I couldn’t quite understand why Peggotty looked so 
queer, or why she was. so ready to go back to the crocodiles. 
However, we returned to those monsters, with fresh wake- 
fulness on my part, and we left their eggs in the sand for the 
sun to hatch; and we ran away from them, and baffled them _ 
by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, 
on account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the 
water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber 
down their throats; and, in short, we ran the whole croco- 
dile gauntlet. J did, at least; but I had my doubts of Peg- 
gotty, who was thoughtfully sticking her needle into various 
parts of her face and arms all the time. 

We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the 
alligators, when the garden-bell rang. We went out to the 
door; and there was my mother, looking unusually pretty, I 
thought, and with her a gentleman with beautiful black hair 
and whiskers, who had walked home with us from church 
last Sunday.  _ 

As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me 
in her arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more 
highly privileged little fellow than a monar¢ch—or something 
like that; for my later understanding comes, I am sensible, 
to my aid here. 


David Gopperfield at 


‘What does that mean?’’ I asked him, over her shoulder. 

He patted me on the head; but, somehow, I didn’t like 
him or his deep voice, and 1 was jealous that his hand should 
touch my mother’s in touching me—which it did. I put it 
away as well as I could. 

“Oh, Davy!’ remonstrated my mother. 

**Dear boy!’ said the gentleman. ‘‘I cannot wonder at 
his devotion.”’ | 

Il neyer saw such a beautiful color on my mother’s face 
before. She gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping 
me close to her shawl, turned to thank the gentleman for 
taking so much trouble as to bring her home. She put out 
her hand to him as she spoke, and, as he met it with his 
own, she glanced, I thought, at me. 

‘‘Let us say ‘good-night,’ my fine boy,’’ said the gentle- 
man, when he had bent his head—J saw him!—over my 
mother’s little glove. 

**Good-night!”’ said I. 

“Come! Let us be the- best friends in the world!’’ said 
the gentleman, laughing. ‘‘Shake hands!’’ 

My right hand was in my mother’s left, so I gave him the 
other. 

‘‘Why, that’s the wrong hand, Davy!’ laughed the gen- 
tleman. . 

My mother drew my right hand forward, but I was re- 
solved, for my former reason, not to give it him, and I did 
not, I gave him the other, and he shook it heartily, and 
said I was a brave fellow, and went away. 

At this minute I see him turn round in the garden, and 
give us a last look with bis ill-omened black eyes before the 
door was shut, 

Peggotty, who had not said a word or moved a finger, 
secured the fastenings instantly, and we all went into the 
’ parlor. My mother, contrary to her usual habit, instead of 
coming to the elbow-chair by the fire, remained at the other 
end of the room, and sat singing to herself. 

‘¢__Hope you have had a pleasant evening, ma’am,’’ said 


28 Works of Charles Diekens 


Peggotty, standing as stiff as a barrel in the center of the 
room, with a candlestick in her hand. 

‘‘Much obliged to you, Peggotty,’’ returned my mother, 
in a cheerful voice, ‘‘I have had a very pleasant evening.”’ 

‘‘A stranger or so makes an agreeable change,’’ suggested 
Peggotty. 

‘*A very agreeable change, indeed,’’ returned my mother. 

Peggotty continued to stand motionless in the middle of 
the room, and my mother resuming her singing, I fell asleep, 
though 1 was not so sound asleep but that I could hear voices, 
without hearing what they said. When I half awoke from 
this uncomfortable doze, I found Peggotty and my mother 
both in tears, and both talking. 

‘‘Not such a one as this, Mr. Copperfield wouldn’t 
have liked,’’ said Peggotty. ‘‘ That I say, and that I 
swear!”’ 

‘‘Good heavens!’’ cried my mother, ‘‘you’ll drive me 
mad! Was ever any poor girl so ill-used by her servants 
as IT am! Why doldo myself the injustice of calling my- 
self a girl? Have I never been married, Peggotty?”’ ; 

‘“God knows you have, ma’am,”’ returned Peggotty. 

‘*Then how can you dare,’’ said my mother—‘‘you know 
I don’t mean how can you dare, Peggotty, but how can you 
have the heart—to make me so uncomfortable and say such 
bitter things to me, when you are well aware that 1 haven’t, 
out of this place, a single friend to-turn to!’’ 

‘“The more’s the reason,’’ returned Peggotty, ‘‘for saying 
that it won’t do. No! That it won’t do. No. No price 
could make it do. No!’’—I thought Peggotty would have 
thrown the candlestick away, she was so emphatic with it. 

‘‘How can you be so aggravating,’’ said my mother, shed- 
ding more tears than before, ‘‘as to talk in such an unjust 
manner! How can you go on as if it was all settled and 
arranged, Peggotty, when I tell you over and over again, © 
you cruel thing, that beyond the commonest civilities noth- 
ing has passed! You talk of admiration. Whatam I to do! 
If people are so silly as to indulge the sentiment is it my 


David @opperfield 99 


fault? Whatam I to do, I ask you? Would you wish me 
to shave my head and black my face, or disfigure myself with 
a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort? I daresay you 
would, Peggotty. I daresay you’d quite enjoy it.” 

Peggotty seemed to take this aspercion very much to heart, 
1 thought. 

‘‘And my dear boy,’’ cried my mother, coming to the 
elbow-chair in which I was, and caressing me, ‘‘my own 
littly Davy! 1s it to be hinted to me that 1 am wanting in 
affection for my precious treasure, the dearest little fellow 
that ever was!’ 

‘*Nobody never went and hinted no such a thing,’ 
Peggotty. 

‘*You did, Peggotty!’’ returned my mother. ‘‘You know 
you did. What else was it possible to infer from what you 
said, you unkind creature, when you know, as well as I do, 
that on his account only last quarter I wouldn’t buy myself 
a new parasol, though that old green one is frayed the whole 
way up, and the fringe is perfectly mangy. You know 
it is, Peggotty. You can’t deny it.”’ Then, turning affec- 
tionately to me, with her cheek against mine, ‘‘Am I a 
naughty mama to you, Davy? Am I a nasty, cruel, selfish, 
bad mama? Say I am, my child; say ‘yes,’ dear boy, and 
Peggotty will love you, and Peggotty’s love is a great deal 
better than mine, Davy. J don’t love you at all, do 1?”’ 

At this we all fell a-crying together. 1 think I was the 
loudest of the party, but 1 am sure we were all sincere about 
it. Jl was quite heartbroken myself, and am afraid that in 
the first transports of wounded tenderness I called Peggotty 
a ‘‘Beast.’’ That honest creature was in deep affliction, I 
remember, and must have become quite buttonless on the 
occasion; for a little volley of those explosives went off, 
when, after having made it up with my mother, she kneeled 
down by the elbow-chair and made it up with me. 

We went to bed greatly dejected. My sobs kept waking 
me for a long time; and when one very strong sob quite 
hoisted me up in bed, I found my mother sitting on the 


> said 


5U Works of Charles Dickens 


coverlit, and leaning over me. I fell asleep in her arms, 
after that, and slept soundly. 

Whether it was the following Sunday when I saw the 
gentleman again, or whether there was any greater lapse 
of time before he reappeared, I cannot recall. 1 don’t pro- 
fess to be clear about dates. But there he was, in church, 
and he walked home with us afterward. He came in, too, 
to look at a famous geranium we had in the parlor window. 
It did not appear to me that he took much notice of it, but 
before he went he asked my mother to give him a bit of the 
blossom. She begged him to choose it for himself, but he 
refused to do that—I could not understand why—so she 
plucked it for him, and gave it into his hand. He said he 
would never, never part with it any more; and I thought 
he must be quite a fool not to know that it would fall to pieces 
in a day or two. 

Peggotty began to be less with us, of an evening, than she 
had always been. My mother deferred to her very much— 
more than usual, it occurred to me—and we were all three 
excellent friends; still we were different from what we used 
to be, and were not so comfortable among ourselyes. Some- 
times I fancied that Peggotty perhaps objected to my mother’s 
wearing all the pretty dresses she had in her drawers, or to 
her going so often to visit at that neighbor’s; but I couldn’t, 
to my satisfaction, make out how it was. 

Gradually I became used to seeing the gentleman with 
the black whiskers. I liked him no better than at first, and 
had the same uneasy jealousy of him; but if I had any reason 
for it beyond a child’s instinctive dislike, and a general idea 
that Peggotty and I could make much of my mother without 
any help, it certainly was not the reason that I might have 
found if I had been older. Nosuch thing came into my mind 
or near it. I could observe, in little pieces, as it were; but 
as to making a net of a number of these pieces, and catching 
anybody in it, that was, as yet, beyond me. 

One autumn morning | was with my mother in the front 
garden, when Mr. Murdstone—I knew him by that name 


David Copperfield 31 


now—came by, on horseback. He reined up his horse to 
salute my mother, and said he was going to Lowestoft to 
see some friends who were there with a yacht, and merrily 
proposed to take me on the saddle before him, if I would like 
the ride. 

The air was so clear and pleasant, and the horse seemed 
to like the idea of the ride so much himself, as he stood 
snorting and pawing at the garden-gate, that I had a great 
desire to go. Sol was sent upstairs to Peggotty to be made 
spruce, and in the meantime Mr. Murdstone dismounted, and, 
with his horse’s bridle drawn over his arm, walked slowly up 
and down on the outer side of the sweetbriar fence, while my 
mother walked slowly up and down on the inner to keep him 
company. I recollect Peggotty and I peeping out at them 
from my little window; I recollect how closely they appeared 
to be examining the sweetbriar between them, as they strolled 
along; and how, from being in a perfectly angelic temper, 
Peggotty turned cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the 
wrong way excessively hard. 

Mr. Murdstone and 1 were soon off and trotting along on 
the green turf by the side of the road. He held me quite - 
easily with one arm, and I don’t think I was restless usu- 
ally; but 1 could not make up my mind to sit in front of him 
without turning my head sometimes, and looking up in his 
face. He had that kind of shallow black eye—I want a 
better word to express an eye that has no depth in it to be 
looked into—which, when it is abstracted, seems from some 
peculiarity of light to be disfigured, for a moment at a time, 
by a cast. Several times when I glanced at him I observed 
that appearance with a sort of awe, and wondered what he 
was thinking about so closely. His hair and whiskers were 
- blacker and thicker, looked at so near, than even | had given 
them credit for being. A squareness about the lower part of 
his face, and the dotted indication of the strong black beard 
he shaved close every day, reminded me of the wax-work that 
had traveled into our neighborhood some half a year before. 
This, his regular eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, 


32 Works of Charles Diekens 


and brown of ,éjs complexion—confound his complexion and 
his memory !—rhade me think him, in spite of my misgivings, 
a very handsome man. I have no doubt that my poor dear 
mother thought him so, too. 

We went to a hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen 
were smoking cigars ina room by themselves. Each of them 
was lying on at least four chairs, and had a large rough jacket 
on. In a corner was a heap of coats and boat-cloaks, and a 
flag, all bundled up together. 

They both rolled on to their feet in an untidy sort of man- — 
ner when we came in, and said: ‘‘Halloa, Murdstone! We 
thought you were dead!’ ° 

‘‘Not yet,’’? said Mr. Murdstone. 

‘‘And who’s this shaver?’’ said one of the gentlemen, 
taking hold of me. 

‘“That’s Davy,’’ returned Mr. Murdstone. 

‘‘Davy who?”’ said the gentleman. ‘‘Jones?’’ 

‘*Copperfield,’’ said Mr. Murdstone. 

‘‘What! Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield’s incumbrance?’’ 
cried the gentleman. ‘‘The pretty little widow?”’ 

‘*Quinion,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘‘take care, if you please. 
~ Somebody’s sharp.”’ 

‘Who is?’’ asked the gentleman, laughing. 

I looked up quickly, being curious to know. 

‘‘Only Brooks of Sheffield,’ said Mr. Murdstone. 

1 was quite relieved to find it was only Brooks of Sheffield; 
for, at first, 1 really thought it was I. 

There seemed to be something very comical in the repu- 
tation of Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen 
laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and Mr. Murd- 
stone was a good deal amused also. After some laughing, 
the gentleman whom he had called Quinion said: 

‘‘And what is the opinion of Brooks of Sheffield, in ref- 
erence to the projected business?”’ 

‘Why, Idon’t know that Brooks understands much about 
it at present,’’ replied Mr. Murdstone; ‘‘but he is not gener- 
ally favorable, I believe.”’ 


™~ 


Js. 


’ David Gopperfield 33 


There was more laughter at this, and Mr.(€ nion said he 
would ring the bell for some sherry in which to drink to 
Brooks. This he did, and when the wine came, he made me 
have a little, with a biscuit, and, before 1 drank it, stand up 
and say, ‘‘Confusion to Brooks of Sheffield!’ The toast was 
received with great applause, and such hearty laughter that 
it made mo laugh too; at which they laughed the more. In 
short, we quite enjoyed ourselves. 

We walked about on the cliff after that, and sat on the 
grass, and looked at things through a telescope—I could make 
out nothing myself when it was put to my eye, but I pre- 
tended I could—and then we came back to the hotel to an 
‘early dinner. All the time we were out, the two gentlemen 
smoked incessantly —which, I thought, if I might judge from 
the smell of their rough coats, they must have been doing 
ever since the coats had first come home from the tailor’s. 1 
must not forget that we went on board the yacht, where they 
all three descended into the cabin, and were busy with some 
papers. I saw them quite hard at work when I looked down 
through the open skylight. They left me, during this time, 
with a very nice man with a very large head of red hair and 
a very small shiny hat upon it, who had got a cross-barred 
shirt or waistcoat on, with ‘‘Skylark’’ in capital letters 
across the chest. I thought it was his name; and that as 
he lived on board ship and hadn’t a street-door to put his 
name on, he put it there instead; but when | called him Mr. 
Skylark, he said it meant the vessel. 

1 observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and 
steadier than the two gentlemen. They were very gay and 
careless. They joked freely with one another, but seldom 
with him. 1t appeared to me that he was more clever and 
cold than they were, and that they regarded him with some- 
thing of my own feeling. I remarked that once or twice 
when Mr. Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr. Murdstone 
-sidewise, as if to make sure of his not being displeased, and 
that once when Mr. Passnidge (the other gentleman) was in 
high spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave him a secret 

Vou. II—(2) 


34 Works of Charles Diekens 


caution with his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was 
sitting stern and silent.. Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murd- 
stone laughed at all that day, except at the Sheffield joke— 
and that, by the-by, was his own. 

We went home early in the evening. It was a very tine 
evening, and my mother and he had another stroll by the 
sweetbriar, while [was sent in to get my tea. When he 
was gone, my mother asked me all about the day I had had, 
and what they had said and done. I mentioned what they 
had said about her, and she laughed, and told me they were 
impudent fellows who talked nonsense—but I knew it pleased 
her. I knew it quite as well as I know it now. I took the 
opportunity of asking if she was at all acquainted with 
Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she 
supposed he must be a manufacturer in the knife and 
fork way. 

Can I say of her face—altered as 1 have reason to remem- 
ber it, perished as I know it is—that it is gone, when here it 
comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that 
I may choose to look on in a crowded street? Can I say of 
her innocent and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no 
more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it fell that 
night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance 
brings her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving 
youth than I have been, or man ever is, still holds fast what 
it cherished then? 

I write of her just as she was when | had gone to bed 
after this talk, and she came to bid me good-night. She 
kneeled down playfully by the side of the bed, and laying her 
chin upon her hands, and laughing, said: 

‘‘What was it they said, Davy? ‘Tell me again. I can’t 
believe it.”’ ' 


‘*“Bewitching—’ ’’ I began. 
My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me. 
‘It was never bewitching,’’ she said, laughing. “It 


never could have been besviteting, ‘Davy. Now 1 know 
it wasn’t!’’ 


David Gopperfield 35 


“Yes it was. ‘Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield,’ ’’ I re- 
peated, stoutly. ‘‘And ‘pretty.’ ”’ 

‘No, no, it was never pretty. Not pretty,’’ interposed 
my mother, laying her fingers on my lips again. 

“Yes it was. ‘Pretty little widow.’ ”’ 

‘*What foolish, impudent creatures!’’ cried my mother, 
laughing and covering her face. ‘‘What ridiculous men! 
Ain’t they? Davy, dear—”’ 

‘* Well, ma.”’ | 

‘*Don’t tell Phowdtty: she might be angry with them. I 
am dreadfully angry yan them myself; but I would rather 
Peggotty didn’t know.’ 

I promised, of course; and we kissed one another over and 
over again, and | soon fell fast asleep. 

lt seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the 
next day when Peggotty broached the striking and adven- 
turous proposition I am about to mention; but it was prob- 
ably about two months afterward. 

We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother 
was out as before), in company with the stocking and the 
yard-measure, and the bit of wax, and the box with Saint 
Paul’s on the lid, and the crocodile book, when Peggotty, 
after looking at me several times, and opening her mouth as 
if she were going to speak, without doing it—which I thought 
was merely gaping, or I should have been rather alarmed— 
said, coaxingly: 

“Master Davy, how would you like to go along with me 
and spend a fortnight at my brother’s at Yarmouth? 
Wouldn’t that be a treat?’’ 

**Ts your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?’’ I inquired, 
provisionally. 

“Oh, what an agreeable man he is!’’ cried Peggotty, 
holding up her hands. ‘‘Then there’s the sea, and the boats 
and ships, and the fishermen, and the beach, and Am to play 
with—”’ . 

Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first 
chapter, but she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar. 


36 ; Works of Charles. Dickens 


I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied 
that it would indeed be a treat, but what would my mother 
say? 

““Why, then Ill as good as bet a guinea,’’ said Peggotty, 
intent upon my face, ‘‘that she’ll let us go. J’ll ask her if 
you like, as soon as ever she comes home. There, now.”’ 

‘*But what’s she to do while we’re away?’’ said I, putting 
my small aba on the table to argue the point. ‘“‘She can’t 
live by herself.’ 

If Peggotty were looking for a Shutat all of a sudden, in 


the heel of that stocking, it must have been a very little one ~ 


indeed, and not worth darning. 

‘‘T say! Peggotty! She can’t live by herself, you know.’ 

‘*Oh, bless you!’ said Peggotty, looking at me again at 
last. ‘‘Don’t youknow? She’s going to stay for a fortnight 
with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs. Grayper’s going to have a lot of 
company.”’ 

Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, 
in the utmost impatience, until my mother came home from 
Mrs. Grayper’s (for it was that identical neighbor), to ascer- 
tain if we could get leave to carry out this great idea. With- 
out being nearly so much surprised as I had expected, my 
mother entered into it readily; and it was all arranged that. 
night, and my board and lodging during the visit were to be 
paid for. 

The day soon came for our going. It was such an early 
day that it came soon, even to me, who was in a fever of 
expectation, and half afraid that an earthquake or a fiery 
mountain, or some other great convulsion of Nature, might 
interpose to stop the expedition. We were to go in a carrier’s 
cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. 1 would 
have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself 
up over night and sleep in my hat and boots. 

It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to 
recollect how eager I was to leave my happy home, to think 
how little I suspected what I did leave forever. 

I am glad to recollect-that when the carrier’s cart was at 


David Copperfield 37 


the gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful 
fondness for her and for the old place I had never turned 
my back upon before, made me cry. 1am glad to know that 
my mother cried, too, and that I felt her heart beat against 
mine. 

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to 
move, my mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to 
stop, that she might kiss me once more. 1am glad to dwell 
upon the earnestness and love with which she lifted up ber 
face to mine, and did so. 

As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came 
up to where she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for 
being so moved. I was looking back round the awning of 
the cart, and wondered what business it was of his. Peg- 
gotty, who was also looking back on the other side, seemed 
anything but satisfied; as the face she brought back into the 
cart denoted. 

I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on 
this supposititious case—whether, if she were employed to 
lose me like the boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to 
track my way home again by the buttons she would shed. 


CHAPTER- THREE 
I HAVE A CHANGE. 


THE carrier’s horse was the laziest horse in the world, l 
should hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he 
liked to keep the people waiting to whom the packages were 
directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled 
audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only 
troubled with a cough. 

The carrier had a way of keeping his head down like his 
horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with 


38 Works of Charles Dickens 


one of his arms on each of his knees. I say ‘‘drove,”’ but it 
struck me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite 
as well without him, for the horse did all that; and, as to 
conversation, he had no idea of it but whistling. 

Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, 
which would have lasted us out handsomely, if we had been 
going to London by the same conveyance. We ate a good 
deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always went to sleep 
with her chin upon the handle of the basket,-her hold of 
which never relaxed; and 1 could not have believed, unless I 
had heard her do it, that one defenseless woman could have 
snored so much. . | 

We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and 
were such a long time delivering a bedstead at a public- 
house, and calling at other places, that I was quite tired, and 
very glad, when we saw Yarmouth. 1t looked rather spongy 
and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull 
waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wonder- 
ing if the world were really as round as my geography-book 
said, how my part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected 
that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles; which 
would account for it. 

As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent 
prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to 
Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it; and 
also that if the land had been a little more separated from 
the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so 
much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been 
nicer. But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than 
usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that 
for her part she was proud to call herself a Yarmouth 
Bloater, 

- When we got into the street (which was strange enough 
to me), and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, 
and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up 
and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a 
place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who heard 


Dauid @opperfield 39 


my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told 
me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the good 
fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the 
whole, the finest place in the universe. 

‘‘Here’s my Am!’ screamed Peggotty, ‘‘growed out of 
knowledge!”’ 7 

He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and 
asked me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. I 
did not feel, at first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, 
because he had never come to our house since the night I 
was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me. But 
our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his 
back to carry me home. He was now a huge, strong fellow 
of six feet high, broad in proportion, and round-shouldered ; 
but with a simpering boy’s face and curly light hair that 
gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in a can- 
vas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they 
would have stood quite as well alone without any legs in 
them. And you couldn’t so properly have said he wore a 
hat as that he was covered in a-top, like an old building, 
with something pitchy. 

Ham carrying me on his back, and a small box of ours 
under his arm, and Peggotty carrying another small box of 
ours, we turned down lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and 
little hillocks of sand, and went past gas-works, rope- walks, 
boat-builders’ yards, shipwrights’ yards, ship-breakers’ 
yards, caulkers’ yards, riggers’ lofts, smiths’ forges, and a 
great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull 
waste I had already seen at a distance; when Ham said: 

‘“Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy!”’ 

I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the 
wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but 
no house could J make out. There was a black barge, or 
some other kind of superannuated boat, not far off, high and 
dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for 
a chimney and smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the 
way of habitation that was visible to me. 


40 Works of Charles. Dickens 


‘“‘That’s not it??? said I. ‘‘That ship-looking thing?”’ 

‘““That’s it, Mas’r Davy,’’ returned Ham. © 

If it had been Aladdin’s palace, roc’s egg and all, I sup- 
pose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic 
idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the 
side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows in 
it; but the wonderful charm of it was, that it was a real 
boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of 





‘THAT'S NOT IT?’ SAID I, ‘‘ THAT SHIP-LOOKING THING ?” 


times, and which had never intended to be lived in on dry 
land. That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever 
been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it small, or 
inconvenient, or lonely; but never having been designed for 
any such use, it became a perfect abode. 

It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. 
There was a table and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, 
and on the chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a 
painting on it of a lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a 


David Gopperfield 4\ 


military-looking child who was trundling a hoop. The tray 
was kept from tumbling down by a Bible; and the tray, if it 
had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups 
and saucers and a teapot that were grouped around the book. 
On the walls there were some common colored pictures, 
framed and glazed, of Scripture subjects; such as I have 
never seen since in the hands of peddlers without seeing the 
whole interior of Peggotty’s brother’s house again at one 
view. Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and 
Daniel in yellow cast into a den of green lions were the most 
prominent of these. Over the little mantel shelf was a pict- 
ure of the Sarah Jane lugger, built at Sunderland, with a 
real little wooden stern stuck on to it; a work of art, com- 
bining composition with carpentry, which 1 considered to be 
one of the most enviable possessions that the world could 
afford. ‘There were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, 
the use of which | did not divine then; and some lockers 
and boxes and conveniences of that sort, which served for 
seats and eked out the chairs. 

All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the 
threshold—child-like, according to my theory—and then 
Peggotty opened a little door and showed me my bedroom. 
It was the completest and most desirable bedroom ever seen 
—in the stern of the vessel; with a little window, where the 
rudder used to go through; a little looking-glass, just the 
right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed 
with oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was just room 
enough to get into, and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug 
on the table. The walls were whitewashed as white as milk, 
and the patch-work counterpane made my eyes quite ache 
with its brightness. One thing | particularly noticed in this 
delightful house was the smell of fish; which was so search- 
ing that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe 
my nose | found it smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a 
lobster. On my imparting this discovery in confidence to 
Peggotty, she informed me that her brother dealt in lobsters, 
crabs, and crawfish; and | afterward found that a heap of 


42 Works of Charles Dickens 


these creatures, in a state of wonderful conglomeration with 
one another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they 
laid hold of, were usually to be found in a little wooden out- 
house where the pots and kettles were kept. 

We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white 
apron, whom I had seen curtseying at the door when I was 
on Ham/’s back, about a quarter of a mile off. Likewise by 
a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so) with a neck- 
lace of blue beads on, who wouldn’t let me kiss her when I 
offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By-and-by, when 
we had dined in a sumptuous manner off boiled dabs, melted 
butter, and potatoes, with a chop for me, a hairy man with 
avery good-natured face came home. As he called Peg- 
gotty ‘“Lass,’’ and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I 
had no doubt, from the general propriety of her conduct, 

that he was her brother; and so he turned out—being pres- 
ently introduced to me as Mr. Peggotty, the master of the 
house. | 

‘Glad to see you, sir,’’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘You’ll find 
us rough, sir, but you'll find us ready.”’ 

I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be 
happy in such a delightful place. 

‘‘How’s your ma, sir?’’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘Did you 
leave her pretty jolly?” 

I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly 
as I could wish, and that she desired her compliments— 
which was a polite fiction on my part. 

‘I’m much obleeged to her, I’m sure,’’ said Mr. Peg- 
votty. ‘‘Well, sir, if you can make out here, for a fortnut, 
‘long wi’ her,’’ nodding at his sister, ‘‘and Ham, and little 
Kim’ly, we shall be proud of your company.”’ 

Having done the honors of his house in this hospitable 
manner, Mr. Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettle- 
ful of hot water, remarking that ‘“‘cold would never get his 
muck off.’? He soon returned, greatly improved in appear- 
ance; but so rubicund, that I couldn’t help thinking his face 
had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish— _ 


David @opperfield — 43 


that it went into the hot water very black, and came out 
very red. 

After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug 
(the nights being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the 
most delicious retreat that the imagination of man could 
conceive. To hear the wind getting up out at sea, to know 
that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat outside, and 
to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near 
but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. 
Little Em’ly had overcome her shyness, and was sitting by 
my side upon the lowest and least of the lockers, which was 
just large enough for us two, and just fitted into the chim- 
ney corner. Mrs. Peggotty, with the white apron, was knit- 
ting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her needle- 
work was as much at home with St. Paul’s and the bit of 
wax-candle as if they had never known any other roof. 
Ham, who had been giving me my first lesson in all-fours, 
was trying to recollect a scheme for telling fortunes with the 
dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of his 
thumb on all the cards he turned. Mr. Peggotty was smok- 
ing his pipe. I felt it was a time for conversation and con- 
fidence. 

“*Mr. Peggotty,’’ says 1. 

‘*Sir,’’ says he. 

**Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you 
lived in a sort of ark?”’ 

Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered: 

*“No, sir. I never giv him no name.”’ 

‘Who gave him that name, then?’’ said I, putting ques- 
tion number two of the catechism to Mr. Peggotty. 

‘‘Why, sir, his father giv it him,’’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

“*T thought you were his father!’’ 

**My brother Joe was his father,’’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

*‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’’ I hinted, after a respectful 
_ pause. 

‘‘Drowndead,”’ said Mr. Peggotty. 
I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not 


44 Works of Charles Dickens 


Ham/’s father, and began to wonder whether I was mistaken 
about his relationship to anybody else there. I was so curi- 
ous to know that 1 made up my mind to have it out with 
Mr. Peggotty. 

‘Little Km’ly,’’ I said, glancing at her. ‘‘She is your 
daughter, isn’t she, Mr. Peggotty?”’ 

‘*No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father.”’ 














“DEAD, MR PEGGOTTY ?*? I HINTED, AFTER A RESPECTFUL PAUSE 


I couldn’t help it. ‘‘—Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’’ 1 hinted, 
after another respectful silence. 

‘‘Drowndead,’’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

1 felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not 
got to the bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom some- 
how. So I said: 

**Haven’t you any children, Mr. Peggotty?”’ 

‘“No, master,’’ he answered, with a short laugh. ‘“‘’ma 
bacheldore.”’ 

**A bachelor!’ I said, astonished. ‘‘Why, who’s that, 


David Copperfield A5 


Mr. Peggotty?’’? Pointing to the person in the apron who 
was knitting. 

‘““That’s Missis Gummidge,”’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

“‘Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?”’ 

But at this point Peggotty—I mean my own peculiar 
Peggotty—made such impressive motions to me not to ask 
any more questions, that I could only sit and look at all the 
silent company until it was time to go to bed. Then, in 
the privacy of my own little cabin, she informed me that 
Ham and Em’ly were an orphan nephew and niece, whom 
my host had at different times adopted in their childhood, 
when they were left destitute; and that Mrs. Gummidge 
was the widow of his partner in a boat, who had died very 
poor. He was but a poor man himself, said Peggotty, but 
as good as gold and as true as steel—those were her similes. 
The only subject, she informed me, on which he ever showed 
a violent temper or swore an oath was this generosity of his; 
and if it were ever referred to, by any one of them, he struck 
the table a heavy blow with his right hand (had split it on 
one such occasion), and swore a dreadful oath that he would 
be ‘‘Gormed’’ if he didn’t cut and run for good, if it was 
ever mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to my in- 
quiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of 
this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all re- 
garded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation. 

I was very sensible of my entertainer’s goodness, and 
listened to the women’s going to bed in another little crib 
like mine at the opposite end of the boat, and to him and 
Ham hanging up two hammocks for themselves on the hooks 
I had noticed in the roof, in a very luxurious state of mind, 
enhanced by my being sleepy. As slumber gradually stole 
upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming 
on across the flat so fiercely that 1 had a lazy apprehension 
of the great deep rising in the night. But I bethought my- 
self that 1 was in a boat, after all; and that a man like Mr. 
Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything 
did happen. — 


46 Works of Charles Dickens 


Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. Al- 
most as soon as it shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my 
mirror I was out of bed, and out with Little Eim’ly, picking 
up stones upon the beach. 

‘‘You’re quite a sailor, I suppose?’’ 1 said to Em’ly. 1 
don’t know that I supposed anything of the kind, but 1 felt 
it an act of gallantry to say something; and a shining sail 
close to us made such a pretty little image of itself, at the mo- 
ment, in her bright eye, that it came into my head to say this. 

““No,’’ replied Em/’ly, shaking her head, ‘‘I’m afraid of 
the sea.”’ 

‘‘Afraid!’’ I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and 
looking very big at the mighty ocean. ‘‘J an’t.”’ 

‘‘Ah! but it’s cruel,’? said Em/’ly. ‘‘I have seen it very 
cruel to some of our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big 
as our house all to pieces.”’ 

‘“*T hope it wasn’t the boat that—’”’ 

‘“‘That father was drowned in?”’ said Em’ly. ‘‘No. Not 
that one, I never see that boat.’’ 

‘‘Nor him?’’ I asked her. 

Little Em’ly shook her head. ‘‘Not to remember!”’ 

Here was a coincidence! I immediately went into an ex- 
planation how | had never seen my own father; and how my 
mother and I had always lived by ourselves in the happiest 
state imaginable, and lived so then, and always meant. to 
live so; and how my father’s grave was in the churchyard 
near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the boughs of 
which I had walked and heard the birds sing many a pleas- 
ant morning. But there were some differences between 
Em/’ly’s orphanhood and mine, it appeared. . She had lost 
her mother before her father, and where her father’s grave 
was no one knew, except that it was somewhere in the depths 
of the sea. 

- “Besides,’’ said Em’ly, as she looked about for shells and 
pebbles, “‘your father was a gentleman and your mother is a 
lady; and my father was a fisherman and my mother was a 
fisherman’s daughter, and my Uncle Dan is a fisherman,”’ 


David Gopperfield 47 


‘‘Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?’’ said I. 

**Uncle Dan—yonder,’’ answered Em/’ly, nodding at the 
boat-house. 

“Yes. I mean him. He must be very good,1 should 
think.”’ 

“‘Good?”’ said Em’ly. ‘‘If 1 was*ever to bea lady, I’d 
give him a sky-blue coat with diamond buttons, nankeen 
trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold 
watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.”’ 

I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty Well deserved 
these treasures. 1 must acknowledge that I felt it difficult 
to picture him quite at his ease in the raiment proposed by his 
grateful little niece, and that I was particularly doubtful of 
the policy of the cocked hat; but I kept these sentiments to 
myself. | 

Little Em’ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her 
enumeration of these articles, as if they were a glorious 
vision. We went on again, picking up shells and pebbles. 

‘You would like to be a lady?”’ I said. 

Em’ly looked at me, and laughed and nodded ‘‘yes.’’ 

‘‘T should like it very much. We would all be gentle- 
folks together, then. Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. 
~Gummidge. We wouldn’t mind, then, when there come 
stormy weather. Not for our own sakes, I mean. We 
would for the poor fishermen’s, to be sure, and we’d help 
?em with money when they come to any hurt.”’ 

This seemed to me to be a very satisfactory and therefore 
not at all improbable picture. I expressed my pleasure in 
the contemplation of it, and little Em’ly was emboldened to 
say, shyly: 

‘Don’t you think you are afraid of the sea, now?”’ 

It was quite enough to reassure me, but 1 have no doubt 
if I had seen a moderately large wave come tumbling in, I 
should have taken to my heels, with an awful recollection of 
her drowned relations... However, I said ‘‘No,’’ and I added, 
““You don’t seem to be, either, though you say you are’’— 
for she was walking much too near the brink of a sort of old 


438 Works of @harles Diekens 


jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled upon, and I was 
afraid of her falling over. 

“‘T’m not afraid in this way,’’ said little Em’ly. ‘But I 
wake when it blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and 
Ham, and believe I hear ’em crying out for help. That’s why 
I should like so much to be a lady. But I’m not afraid in this 
way. Nota bit. Look here!”’ 

She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber 
which protruded from the place we stood upon, and over- 
hung the deep water at some height, without the least de- 
fense. The incident is so impressed on my remembrance that 
if I were a draughtsman I could draw its form hore, J dare- 
say, accurately as it was that day, and little Em’ly springing 
forward to her destruction (as it appeared to me), with a look 
that I have never forgotten, directed far out to sea. 

The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came 
back safe to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at 
the cry I had uttered; fruitlessly in any case, for there was 
no one near. But there have been times since, im my man- 
hood, many times there have been, when | have thought, Is 
it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that in 
the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, 
there was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any 
tempting her toward him permitted on the part of her dead 
father, that her life night have a chance of ending that day. 
There has been a time since when I have wondered whether, 
if the life before her could have been revealed to me at a 
glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully compre- 
hend it, and if her preservation could have depended on a 
motion of my hand, I ought to have held it up to save her. 
There has been a time since—I do not say it lasted long, but 
it has been—when I have asked myself the question, Would it 
have been better for little Em’ly to have had the waters close 
above her head that morning in my sight, and when 1 have 
answered Yes. | | 

This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, 
perhaps. But let it stand. 


David Qopperfield 49 


We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things 
that we thought curious, and put some stranded star-fish 
carefully back into the water—I hardly know enough of the 
race at this moment to be quite certain whether they had 
reason tc feel obliged to us for doing so, or the reverse—and 
then made our way home to Mr. Peggotty’s dwelling. We 
stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an 
innocent kiss, and went into breakfast glowing with health 
and pleasure. 

‘‘Like two young mavishes,’’ Mr. Peggotty said. I 
knew this meant, in our local dialect, like two young 
thrushes, and received it as a compliment. 

Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. lam sure I 
loved that baby quite as tenderly, with greater purity and 
more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of 
a later time of life, high and ennobling as itis. I am sure 
my fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of 
a child which etherealized and made a very angel of her. 
If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings 
and flown away before my eyes, I don’t think I should have 
regarded it as much more than I had reason to expect. 

We used to walk about ‘that dim old flat at Yarmouth in 
a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, 
as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child 
too, and always at play. I told Em’ly 1 adored her, and that 
unless she confessed she adored me I should be reduced to 
the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she 
did, and I have no doubt she did. 

As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other 
difficulty in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, 
because we had no future. We made no more provision for 
growing older than we did for growing younger. We were 
the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty, who used 
to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little 
locker side by side, ‘‘Lor! wasn’t it beautiful!’ Mr. Peg- 
gotty smiled at us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned 
all the evening and did nothing else. -They had something 


50 Works of Charles Dickens 


of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that they might 
have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the 
Colosseum. 1 

I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always 
make herself so agreeable as she might have been expected 
to do, under the circumstances of her residence with Mr. 
Peggotty. Mrs. Gummidge’s was rather a fretful disposi- 
tion, and she whimpered more sometimes than was com- 
fortable for other parties in so small an establishment. I 
was very sorry for her; but there were moments when it 
would have been more agreeable, I thought, if Mrs. Gum- 
midge had had a convenient apartment of her own to retire 
to, and had stopped there until her spirits revived. | 

Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called 
The Willing Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on 
the second or third evening of our visit, and by Mrs. Gum- 
midge’s looking up at the Dutch clock, between eight and 
nine, and saying he was there, and that, what was more, she 
had known in the morning he would go there. 

Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had 
burst into tears in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. ‘‘I 
am a lone lorn creetur’,’? were Mrs. Gummidge’s words, 
when that unpleasant occurrence took place, ‘‘and every- 
think goes contrairy with me.’’. 

*‘Oh, it’ll soon leave off,’’ said Peggotty—I again mean 
our Peggotty—‘‘and besides, you know, it’s not more dis- 
agreeable to you than to us.”’ 

**T feel it more,’’ said Mrs. Gummidge. 

It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. Mrs. 
Gummidge’s peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to 
be the warmest and snuggest in the place, as her chair was 
certainly the easiest; but it didn’t suit her that day at all. 
She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occa- 
sioning a visitation in her back which she called ‘‘the creeps.”’ 
At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again that 
she was ‘‘a lone lorn creetur’ and everythink went contrairy 
with her.”’ : 


David Copperfield 51 


“It is certainly very cold,’’ said Peggotty. ‘‘Everybody 
-must feel it so.”’ 

**} feel it more than other people,’’ said Mrs. Gummidge. 

So at dinner, when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped 
immediately after me, to whom the preference was given as 
a visitor of distinction. The fish were small and bony, and 
the potatoes were a little burned. We all acknowledged that 
we felt this something of a disappointinent; but Mrs. Gum- 
midge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again, 
and made that former declaration with great bitterness. 

Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine 
o’clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in 
her corner in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peg- 
gotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching 
up a great pair of water-boots; and I, with little Km’ly by 
my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had 
never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had 
never raised her eyes since tea. 

‘‘Well, mates,’’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, ‘‘and 
how are you?”’ 

We all said something, or looked something, to welcome 
him, except Mrs. Gummidge, who only shook her head 
over her knitting. 

‘‘What’s amiss?”’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his 
hands. ‘‘Cheer up, old Mawther!’ (Mr. Peggotty meant 
old girl.) , 

Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. 
She took out an old black silk handkerchief and wiped her 
eyes; but instead of putting it in her pocket, kept it out, and 
wiped them again, and still kept it out, ready for use. 

‘‘What’s amiss, dame?’’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

_“Nothing,’’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘‘You’ve come 
from The Willing Mind, Dan’1?”’ 

‘Why, yes, I’ve took a short spell at The Willing Mind 
to-night,’’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘‘1’m sorry 1 should drive you there,’’ said Mrs. Gum 
midge. 


52 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘Drive! I don’t want no driving,’’ returned Mr. Peg- 
ootty, with an honest laugh. ‘‘l only go too ready.” 

‘‘Very ready,’’ said Mrs. Gummidge, shaking ber head, 
and wiping her eyes. ‘‘Yes, yes, very ready. I am sorry 
it should be along of me that you’re so ready.’’ 

‘Along o’ you? It an’t along o’ you!’ said Mr. Peg- 
gotty. ‘‘Don’t ye believe a bit on it.”’ 

““Yes, yes, it is,’’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘‘I know what 
Iam. I know that I amalone lorn creetur’ and not only that 
everythink goes contrairy with me, but that I go contrairy 
with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people 
do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun’.”’ 

I really couldn’t help thinking, as | sat taking in all this, 
that the misfortune extended to some other members of that 
family besides Mrs. Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made 
no such retort, only answering with another entreaty to Mrs. 
Gummiidge to cheer up. 

‘*T an’t what I could wish myself to be,’’ said Mrs. Gum- 
midge. ‘‘Iamfarfromit. 1 knowwhatIam. My troubles 
has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make 
me contrairy. I wish I didn’t feel ’em, but I do. I wish I 
could be hardened to ’em, but 1 an’t. I make the house un- 
comfortable. I don’t wonder at it. I’ve made your sister so 
all day, and Master Davy.” ; 

Here 1 was suddenly melted and roared out: ‘‘No, you 
haven’t, Mrs. Gummidge,’’ in great mental distress. 

‘*It’s far from right that 1 should do it,’ said Mrs Gum- 
midge. ‘‘Itan’ta fit return. I had better go into the house 
and die. I ama lone lorn creetur’, and had much better not 
make myself contrairy here. If thinks must go contrairy 
with me, and 1 must go contrairy myself, let me go contrairy 
in my parish. Dan’l, I’d better go into the house, and die 
and be a riddance!’’ 

Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook 
herself to bed. When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who 
had not exhibited a trace of any feeling but the profoundest 
sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head with 


David Copperfield 53 


a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face, 
said, in a whisper: 

‘*She’s been thinking of the old ’un!”’ 

I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge 
was supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, 
on seeing me to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gum- 
midge, and that her brother always took that for a received 
truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving 
effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock 
that night, I heard him myself repeat to Ham, ‘‘Poor thing! 
She’s been thinking of the old ’un!’? And whenever Mrs. 
Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the 
remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he 
always said the same thing in extenuation of the circum- 
stance, and always with the tenderest commiseration. 

So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the 
variation of the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty’s times of 
going out and coming in, and altered Ham’s engagements 
also. When the latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked 
with us to show us the boats and ships, and once or twice he 
took us for a row. I don’t know why one slight set of im- 
pressions should be more particularly associated with a place 
than another, though I believe this obtains with most people, 
in reference especially to the associations of their childhood. 
I never hear the name, or read the name of Yarmouth, but 
l am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the beach, 
the bells ringing for church, little EKm’ly leaning on my 
shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the 
sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and 
showing us the ships, like their own shadows. 

At last the day came for going home. I bore up against 
the separation from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but 
my agony of mind at leaving little Em’ly was piercing. We 
went arm-in-arm to the public-house where the carrier put 
up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her (I redeemed 
that promise afterward, in characters larger than those in 
which apartments are usually announced in manuscript as 


54 Works of Charles Diekens 


being to let). We were greatly overcome at parting, and if 
ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my heart,-I had 
one made that day. 

Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been un- 
grateful to my home again, and had thought little or nothing 
about it. But I was no sooner turned toward it than my 
reproachful young conscience seemed to point that way with 
a steady finger; and I felt, all the more for the sinking in 
my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my 
comforter and friend. 

This gained upon me as we went along, so that the nearer 
we drew, and the more familiar the objects became that we 
passed, the more excited 1 was to get there, and to run into 
her arms. But Peggotty, instead of sharing in these trans- 
ports, tried to check them (though very kindly), and looked | 
confused and out of sorts. 

Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of 
her, when the carrier’s horse pleased—and did. How well 
I recoliect it, on a cold, gray afternoon, with a dull sky, 
threatening rain! 

The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half 
crying in my pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not 
she, but a strange servant. 

“Why, Peggotty!’ I said, ruefully, ‘‘isn’t she come 
home??’’ 

‘*Yes, yes, Master Davy,’’ said Peggotty. ‘‘She’s come 
home. Waita bit, Master Davy, and ’I—I’1] tell you some- 
thing.”’ | 

Between her agitation and her natural awkwardness in 
getting out of the cart, Peggotty was making a most extraor- 
dinary festoon of herself; but I felt too blank and strange 
to tell her so. When she had got down, she took me by the 
hand, led me, wondering, into the kitchen, and shut the door. 

‘‘Peggotty!’’? said I, quite frightened. ‘‘What’s the 
matter?”’ 

‘‘Nothing’s the matter, bless you, Master Davy, dear!’’ 
she answered, assuming an air of sprightliness. 


_ 


David Qopperfield 55 


‘*Something’s the matter, I’m sure. Where’s mama?’’ 

‘“Where’s mama, Master Davy?’’ repeated Peggotty. 

“Yes. Why hasn’t she come out to the gate, and what 
have we come in here for? Oh, Peggotty!’’ My eyes were 
full, and I felt as if I were going to tumble down. 

‘*Bless the precious boy!’’ cried Peggotty, taking hold of 
me. ‘‘Whatisit? Speak, my pet!”’ 

‘*Not dead, too! Oh, she’s not dead, Peggotty?’’ 

Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of 
voice; and then sat down, and began to pant, and said I 
had given her a turn. 

I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give ber 
another turn in the right direction, and then stood before her, 
looking at her in anxious inquiry. 

**You see, dear, I should have told you before now,’’ said 
Peggotty, ‘‘but I hadn’t an opportunity. 1 ought to have 


made it, perhaps, but I couldn’t azackly’’—that was always 
the substitute for exactly, in Peggotty’s militia of words— 


‘‘bring my mind to it.’”’ 

““Go on, Peggotty,’’ said 1, more frightened than before. 

**Master Davy,’’ said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with 
a shaking hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way. 
‘*What do you think? You have gota Pa!’ 

I trembled, and turned white. Something—l don’t know 
what, or how—connected with the grave in the churchyard, 
and the raising of the dead, seemed to strike me like an un- 
wholesome wind. 

‘*A new one,’’ said Peggotty. 

**A new one?’’ I repeated. 

Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing 
something that was very hard, and, putting out her hand, 
said : . 

‘*Come and see him.”’ 

**T don’t want to see him.”’ 

**__And your mama,”’ said Peggotty. 

I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best 
parlor, where she left me., On one side of the fire sat my 


56 Works of Charles Dickens 


mother; on the other, Mr. Murdstone. My mother dropped 
her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly I thought. 

‘‘Now, Clara, my dear,’’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘‘Recol- 
lect! control yourself, always sae yourself! Davy, boy, 
how do you do?”’ 

I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I 
went and kissed my mother; she kissed me, patted me gently 
on the shoulder, and sat down again to her work. I could 
not look at her, I could not look at him, I knew quite well 
that he was looking at us both; and I turned to the window 
and looked out there, at some shrubs that were drooping their 
heads in the cold. ° 

As soon as I could creep away I crept ipSeaeel My old 
dear bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off. 
I rambled downstairs to find anything that was like itself, 
so altered it all seemed; and roamed into the yard. I very 
soon started back from there, for the empty dog-kennel was 
filled up with a great dog—deep-mouthed and _ black-haired 
like Him—and he was very angry at the sight of me, and 
sprung out to get at me. 


CHAPTER FOUR 
I FALL INTO DISGRACE 


Ir the room to which my bed was removed were a sen- 
tient thing that could give evidence, I might appeal to it at 
this day—who sleeps there now, I wonder!—to bear witness 
for me what a heavy heart I carried to it. I went up there, 
hearing the dog in the yard bark after me all the way while 
I climbed the stairs; and, looking as blank and strange upon 
the room as the room looked upon me, sat down with my 
small hands crossed, and thought. 

I thought of the oddest things. Of theshape of the room, 
of the cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the wall, of the 


- 


David Copperfield 57 


flaws in the window glass making ripples and dimples on the 
prospect, of the washing-stand being rickety on its three legs 
and having a discontented something about it, which re- 
minded me of Mrs. Gummidge under the influence of the 
old one. I was crying all the time; but, except that I was 
conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure 1 never 
thought why I cried. At last in my desolation I began to 
consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em’ly, and 
had been torn away from her to come here, where no one 
seemed to want me, or to care about me, half so much as she 
did. This made such a very miserable piece of business of - 
it that I rolled myself up in a corner of the counterpane, and 
cried myself to sleep. 

I was awoke by somebody saying, ‘‘Here he is!’’ and 
uncovering my hot head. My mother and Peggotty had come 
to look for me, and it was one of them who had done it. 

‘*Davy,’’ said my mother. ‘‘ What’s the matter?”’ 

I thought it very strange that she should ask me, and 
answered, ‘‘Nothing.’’ I turned over on my face, I rec- 
ollect, to hide my trembling lip, which answered her with 
greater truth. 

“‘Davy,’’ said my mother. ‘‘Davy, my child!’’ 

I daresay no words she could have uttered would have 
affected me so much, then, as her calling me her child. I 
hid my tears in the bedclothes, and pressed her from me with 
my hand, when she would have raised me up. 

“This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!’’ said 
my mother. “‘I have no doubt at all about it. How can 
you reconcile it to your conscience, 1 wonder, to prejudice 
my own boy against me, or against anybody who is dear to 
me? What do you mean by it, Peggotty?’’ 

Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only 
answered, in a sort of paraphrase of the grace | usually re- 
peated after dinner, “‘Lord forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, 
and for what you have said this minute, may you never be 
truly sorry.”’ 

“‘Tt’s enough to distract me,’’ cried my mother. ‘‘In my 


58 Works of Charles Dickens 


honeymoon, too, when my most inveterate enemy might re- 
lent, one would think, and not envy me a little peace of mind 
and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy! Peggotty, you 
savage creature! Oh, dear me!’’ cried my mother, turning 
from one of us to the other, in her pettish willful manner, 
‘‘what a troublesome world this is, when one has the most 
right to expect it to. be as agreeable as possible.”’ 

I felt the touch of a hand that 1 knew was neither hers 
nor Peggotty’s, and slipped to my feet at the bedside. It 
was Mr. Murdstone’s hand, and he kept it on my arm as he 
- Said: 

‘“What’s this? Clara, my love, have you forgotten? 
Firmness, my dear!’’ 

‘‘T am very sorry, Edward,’’ said my mother. ‘‘l meant 
to be very good, but I am so uncomfortable.’’ 

‘*Indeed!’’ he answered. ‘‘That’s a bad hearing, so 
soon, Clara.’’ 

‘*T say it’s very hard I should be made so now,”’’ returned 
my mother, pouting; ‘‘and it is—very hard—isn’t it?”’ 

He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed 
her. I knew as well, when I saw my mother’s head lean 
down upon his shoulder, and her arm touch his neck—I 
knew as well that he could mold her pliant nature into any 
form he chose, as 1 know, now, that he did it. 

‘‘Go you below, my love,’’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘‘David 
and 1 will come down together. My friend,’’ turning a 
darkening face on Peggotty, when he had watched my mo- . 
ther out, and dismissed her with a nod and asmile: ‘‘do you 
know your mistress’s name?”’ 

‘‘She has been my mistress a long time, sir,’’ answered 
Peggotty. ‘‘I ought to know it.”’ 

‘‘That’s true,’’ he answered. ‘‘But I thought 1 heard 
you, as I came upstairs, address her by a name that is not 
hers.. She has taken mine, you know. Will you remember 
that?’’ 

Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed her- 
self out of the room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that 


David @opperfield 59 


she was expected to go, and had no excuse for remaining. 
When we two were left alone, he shut the door, and sitting 
on a chair, and holding me standing before him, looked 
steadily into my eyes. I felt my own attracted, no less 
steadily, to his.- As I recall our being opposed thus, face to 
face, I seem again to hear my heart beat fast and high. 

*‘David,’’ he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them 
together, ‘‘if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, 
what do you think I do?”’ 

**T don’t know..”’ 

‘*] beat him.”’ 

I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I 
felt, in my silence, that my breath was shorter now. 

‘‘f make him wince and smart. 1 say to myself, ‘I'll 
conquer that fellow’; and, if it were to cost him all the blood 
he had, I should do it. What is that upon your face?’’ 

‘*Dirt,’’ I said. 

He knew it was the mark of tears as wellas I. But if 
he had asked the question twenty times, each time with 
twenty blows, I believe my baby heart would have burst be- 
fore I would have told him so. 

‘*You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow,’’ 
he said, with a grave smile that belonged to him, ‘‘and you 
understood me very well, 1 see. Wash that face, sir, and 
come down with me.”’ 

He pointed to the washing-stand, which 1 had made out 
to be like Mrs. Gummidge, and motioned me with his hand 
to obey him directly. I had little doubt then, and I have 
less doubt now, that he would have knocked me down with- 
out the least compunction, if I had hesitated. 

*‘Clara, my dear,’’ he said, when I had done his bidding, 
and he walked me into the parlor, with his hand still on my 
arm; ‘‘you will not be made uncomfortable any more, I 
hope. We shall soon improve our youthful humors.’’ 

God help me, I might have been improved for my whole 
life, I might have been made another creature perhaps for 
life, by a kind word at that season. A word of encourage- 


. 


60 Works of Charlés Dickens 


ment and explanation, of pity for my childish ignorance, of 
welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might 
have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead 
of in my hypocritical outside, and might have made me re- 
spect instead of hate him. I thought my mother was sorry 
to see me standing in the room so scared and strange, and 
that presently, when I stole to a chair, she followed me with 
her eyes more sorrowfully still—missing, perhaps, some free- 
dom in my childish tread—but the word was not spoken, and 
the time for it was gone. 

We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be 
very fond of my mother—I am afraid I liked him none the 
better for that—and she was very fond of him. I gathered 
from what they said that an elder sister of his was coming 
to stay with them, and that she was expected that evening. 
I am not certain whether I found out then or afterward that, 
without being actively concerned in any business, he had 
some share in, or some annual charge upon the profits of, a 
wine-merchant’s house in London, with which his family 
had been connected from his great-grandfather’s time, and 
in which his sister had a similar interest; but [ may men- 
tion it in this place whether or no. 

After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was 
meditating an escape to Peggotty without having the hardi- 
hood to slip away, lest it should offend the master of the 
house, a coach drove up to the garden-gate, and he went out 
to receive the visitor. My mother followed him. I was 
timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlor- 
door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had 
been used to do, whispered me to love my new father and 
be obedient to him. She did this hurriedly and secretly, as 
if it were wrong, but tenderly; and, putting out her hand 
behind her, held mine in it, until we came near to where he 
was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and 
drew hers through his arm. 

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a El paaniare 
looking lady she .was; dark, like her brother, whom she 


David @opperfield 61 


greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy 
eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being 
disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, 
she had carried them to that account. She brought with 
her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials 
on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coach- 
man she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she 
kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her 
arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, 
at that time, seen such a inetallic lady altogether as Miss 
Murdstone was. ? 

She was brought into the parlor with many tokens of wel- 
come, and there formally recognized my mother as a new 
and near relation. Then she looked at me, and said: 

**Ts that your boy, sister-in-law?”’ 

My mother acknowledged me. 

‘*Generally speaking,’’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘‘I don’t like 
boys. How do you do, boy?”’’ 

Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I 
was very well, and that I hoped she was the same; with 
such an indifferent grace that Miss Murdstone disposed of 
me in two words: 

‘*Wants manner 

Having uttered which with great distinctness, she begged 
the favor of being shown to her room, which became to me 
from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the 
two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left 
unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when 
she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with 
which Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was 
dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in formidable 
array. } 

As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and 
had no intention of ever going again. She began to ‘‘help’’ 
my mother next morning, and was in and out of the store- 
closet all day, putting things to rights, and making havoc in 
the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing I 


19? 


62 Works of Charles Dickens 


observed in Miss Murdstone was her being constantly haunt- 
ed by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted some- 
where on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, 
she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, 
and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard with- 
out clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him. 

Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murd- 
stone, she was a perfect lark in point of getting up. She 
was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) 
before anybody in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it 
as her opinion that she even slept with one eye open; but I 
could not concur in this idea; for [ tried it myself after hear- 
ing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn’t be 
done. | 

On the very first morning after her arrival she was up 
and ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother came 
down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss 
Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was 
her nearest approach to a kiss, and said: 

‘‘Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to 
relieve you of all the trouble I can. You’re much too pretty 
and thoughtless’’-—-my mother blushed but laughed, and 
seerned not to dislike this character—‘‘to have any duties 
imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you’ll 
be so good as give me your keys, my dear, I’ll attend to all 
this sort of thing in the future.’’ 

From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her 
own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and 
‘my mother had no more to do with them than | had. 

My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her 
without a shadow of protest. One night when Miss Murd- 
stone had been developing certain household plans to her 
brother, of which he signified his approbation, my mother 
suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have 
been consulted. 

“‘Clara!’’? said Mr. Murdsone, sternly. ‘‘Clara! 1 won- 
der at you.’’ 


David @opperfield 63 


**Oh, it’s very well to say you wonder, Edward!’’ cried 
my mother, ‘‘and it’s very well for you to talk about firm- 
ness, but you wouldn’t like it yourself.’ 

Firmness, 1 may observe, was the grand quality on which 
both Mr. and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I 
might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, 
if 1 had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly compre- 
hend it in my own way, that it was another name for tyran- 
ny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humor, that 
was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was 
this. Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to 
be so firm as Mr. Murdstone, nobody elso in his world was 
to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness. 
Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but 
only by relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree. 
My mother was another exception. She might be firm, and 
must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly be- 
lieving there was no other firmness upon earth. 

‘It’s very hard,’’ said my mother, ‘‘that in my own 
house—”’ 

‘**‘ My own house?’’ repeated Mr. Murdstone. ‘‘Clara!’’ 

‘**Our own house, I mean,’’ faltered my mother, evident- 
ly frightened—‘‘I hope you must know what I mean, Kd- 
ward-—it’s very hard that in your own house I may not have 
a word to say about domestic matters. Iam sure [ managed 
very well before we were married. There’s evidence,’ said 
-my mother, sobbing; ‘‘ask Peggotty if 1 didn’t do very well 
when | wasn’t interfered with.”’ 

‘‘Hidward,’’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘‘let there be an end to 
this. 1 go to-morrow.”’ 

‘‘Jane Murdstone,’’ said her brother, ‘“‘be silent! How. 
dare you to insinuate that you don’t know my character bet- 
ter than your words imply?”’ 

‘‘T am sure,’? my poor mother went on at a grievous dis- 
advantage, and with many tears, ‘‘I don’t want anybody to 
go. 1 should be very miserable and unhappy if anybody 
was to go. I don’t ask much. Iam not unreasonable. 1 


64 ‘Works of Charles Dickens 


only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very much 
obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be 
consulted as a mere form sometimes. I thought you were 
pleased once with my being a little inexperienced and girl- 
ish, Edward—I am sure you said so-—but you seem to hate 
me for it now, you are so severe.”’ 

‘‘Hdward,’’ said Miss Murdstone, again, “‘let there be an 
end to this. I go to-morrow.”’ 

‘‘Jane Murdstone,’’ thundered Mr. Murdstone. ‘‘ Will 
you be silent? How dare you?”’ 7 

Miss Murdstone made a jail delivery of hor pocket-hand- 
kerchief, and held it before her eyes . 

‘‘Clara,’’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘‘you sur- 
prise me! You astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in 
the thought of marrying an inexperienced and artless person, 
and forming her character, and infusing into it some amount 
of that firmness and decision of which it stood in need. But 
when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my assist- 
ance in this endeavor, and to assume, for my sake, a con- 
dition something like a housekeeper’s, and when she meets 
with a base return—’’ 

‘‘Oh, pray, pray, Edward,’’ cried my mother, ‘‘don’t ac- 
cuse me of being ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrate- 
ful. No one ever said 1 was before. I have many faults, 
but not that. Oh, don’t, my dear!’’ 

‘‘When Jane Murdstone meets, 1 say,’’ he went on, after 
waiting until my mother was silent, ‘‘with a base return, that . 
feeling of mine is chilled and altered.”’ 

‘*Don’t, my love, say that!’’ implored my mother very 
piteously. ‘‘Oh, don’t, Edward! I can’t bear to hear it. 
Whatever I am, I am affectionate. 1 know 1 am affection- 
ate. I wouldn’t say it, if I wasn’t certain thatl am. Ask 
Peggotty. I am sure she’ll tell you I am affectionate.’’ 

‘‘There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,’’ said Mr. 
Murdstone, in reply, ‘‘that can have the least weight with 
me. You lose breath.”’ 

‘*Pray let us be friends,’’ said my mother; ‘‘1 couldn’t 


David Copperfield 65 


live under coldness or unkindness. I am so sorry. I have 
a great many defects, I know, and it’s very good of you, 
Edward, with your strength of mind, to endeavor to correct 
them forme. Jane, I don’t object to anything. I should 
be quite broken-hearted if you thought of leaving—’’ My 
mother was too much overcome to go on. 

‘‘Jane Murdstone,”’ said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, 
‘fany harsh words between us are, I hope, uncommon. It 
is not my fault that so unusual an occurrence has taken 
place to-night. Iwas betrayed into it by another. Nor is 
it your fault. You were betrayed into it by another. Let 
us both try to forget it. And as this,’’ he added, after these 
magnanimous words, ‘‘is not a fit scene for the boy—David, 
go to bed!”’ 

I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood 
in my eyes. Iwas so sorry for my mother’s distress; but 1 
groped my way out, and groped my way up to my room in 
the dark, without even having the heart to say good-night 
to Peggotty, or to get a candle from her. When her com- 
ing up to look for me, an hour or so afterward, awoke me, 
she said that my mother had gone to bed poorly, and that 
Mr. and Miss Murdstone were sitting alone. 

Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, 1 
paused outside the parlor door, on hearing- my mother’s 
voice. She was very earnestly and humbly entreating Miss 
Murdstone’s pardon, which that lady granted, and a perfect 
reconciliation took place. I never knew my mother after- 
ward to give an opinion on any matter, without first appeal- 
ing to Miss Murdstone, or without having first ascertained, 
by some sure means, what Miss Murdstone’s opinion was; 
and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out of temper (she 
was infirm that way), move her hand toward her bag as if 
she was going to take out the keys and offer to resign them 
to my mother without seeing that my mother was in a terri- 
ble fright. 

_The gloomy taint taat was in the Murdstono blood dark- 
ened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrath- 

Vou. TI—(3) 


66 Works of Charles Dickens — 


ful. I have thought since that its assuming that character 
was a necessary consequence of Mr. Murdstone’s firmness, 
which wouldn’t allow him to let anybody off from the utmost 
weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse for. 
Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages 
with which we used to go to church, and the changed air of 
the place. Again,the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I 
file into the old pew first, ike a guarded captive brought to 
a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black 
velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, 
follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. 
There is no Peggotty now as in the old time. Again, I 
listen to Miss Murdstone mumbling the responses, and em- 
phasizing all the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I 
see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says ‘‘mis- 
erable sinners,’’ as if she were calling all the congregation 
names. Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moy- 
ing her lips timidly between the two, with one of them mut- 
tering at each ear like low thunder. Again, I wonder, with 
a sudden fear, whether it is likely that our good old clergy- 
man can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and 
that all the angels in heaven can be destroying angels. 
Again, if 1 move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss 
Murdstone pokes me with her prayer-book and makes my 
side ache. 

Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbors 
looking at my mother, and at me, and whispering. Again, 
as the three go on, arm-in-arm, and 1 linger behind alone, 1 
follow some of those looks, and wonder if my mother’s step 
be really not so light as I have seen it, and if the gayety of 
her beauty be really almost worried away. Again, I won- 
der whether any of the neighbors call to mind, as I do, how 
we used to walk home together, she and I; and I wonder 
stupidly about that, all the dreary dismal day. 

There had been some talk on occasions of my going to 
boarding-school. Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated 
it, and my mother had of course agreed with them. Noth- 


David Gopperfield 67 


ing, however, was concluded on the subject yet. In the 
meantime I learned lessons at home. 

Shall I ever forget those lessons! They were presided 
over nominally by my mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone 
and his sister, who were always present, and found them a 
favorable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that mis- 
called firmness which was the bane of both our lives. I be- 
lieve 1 was kept at home for that purpose. I had beon apt 
enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and 
I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learn- 
ing the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when | look upon 
the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of 
their shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and §, 
seem to present themselves again before me as they used to 
do. But they recall no feeling of disgust and reluctance. 
On the contrary, I seemed to have walked along a path of 
flowers as far as the crocodile book, and to have been cheered 
by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manner all the 
way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, | re- 
member as the death-blow at my peace, and a grievous daily 
drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numer- 
ous, very hard—perfectly unintelligible, some of them, to me 
—and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I be- 
lieve my poor mother was herself. 

Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morn- 
ing back again. | 

-l come into the second-best parlor after breakfast, with 
my books, and an exercise-book and a slate. My mother is 
ready for me at her writing-desk, but not half so ready as 
Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair by the window (though he 
pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss Murdstone, sitting 
near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight of 
these two has such an influence over me that I begin to feel 
the words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head 
all sliding away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder 
where they do go, by the bye? 

I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a 


68 Works of Charles Diekens 


grammar, perhaps a history, or geography. I take a last 
drowning look at the page as 1 give it into her hand, and 
start off aloud at a racing pace while | have got it fresh. I 
trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip over an- 
other word. Miss Murdstone looks up. 1 redden, tumble 
over half a dozen words, and stop. I think my mother 
would show me the book if she dared, but she does not dare, 
and she says, softly: 

‘‘Oh, Davy, Davy!”’ 

‘‘Now, Clara,’’ says Mr. Murdstone, ‘‘be firm with the 
boy. Don’t say, ‘Oh, Davy, Davy! That’s childish. He 
knows his lesson, or he does not know it.’ 

‘‘He does not know it,’? Miss Murdstone interposes, 
awfully. 

‘‘T am really afraid he does not,’’? says my mother. 

‘“‘Then you see, Clara,’’ returns Miss Murdstone, ‘‘you 
should just give him the book back, and make him know it.”’ 

‘‘Yes, certainly,’’? says my mother; ‘‘that is what I intend 
to do, my dear Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don’t 
be stupid.”’ 

I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once 
more, but am not so successful with the second, for I am 
very stupid. I tumble down before 1 get to the old place, 
at a point where I was all right before, and stop to think. 
But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the number of 
yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s cap, or of the price of Mr. 
Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem 
that I have no business with, and don’t want to have anything 
at all todo with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of im- 
patience which I have been expecting for a long time. Miss 
Murdstone does the same. My mother glances submissively 
at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear Heo be 
worked out when my other tasks are done. 

There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells 
like a rolling snow-ball. The bigger it gets the more stupid 
I get. The case is so hopeless, and I feel that 1 am wallowing 
in such a bog of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting 


David @opperfield 69 


‘out, and abandon myself to my fate. The despairing way 
in which my mother and I look at each other, as I blunder 
on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these 
miserable lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is 
observing her) tries to give me the cue by the motion of her 
lips. At that instant, Miss Murdstone, who has been lying 
in wait for nothing else all along, says, in a deep, warning 
voice: 

‘*Clara!’’ 

My mother starts, colors, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murd- 
stone comes out of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me, 
or boxes my ears with it, and turns me out of the room by 
the shoulders. 

Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to 
happen, in the shape of an appalling sum. This is invented 
for me, and delivered to me orally by Mr. Murdstone, and 
begins: ‘“‘If I go into a cheesemonger’s shop, and buy five 
thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny 
each, present payment’’—at which I see Miss Murdstone 
secretly overjoyed. I pore over these cheeses without any 
result or enlightenment until dinner-time; when, having 
made a mulatto of myself by getting the dirt of the slate 
into the pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help me 
out with the cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the 
rest of the evening. 

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfor- 
tunate studies generally took this course. I could have done 
very well if I had been without the Murdstones; but the in- 
fluence of the Murdstones upon me was like the fascination 
of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even when I did 
get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not 
much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could 
endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly made any show 
of being unemployed, called her brother’s attention to me 
by saying, ‘*Clara, my dear, there’s nothing like work—give 
your boy an exercise,’’ which caused me to be clapped down 
to some new labor there and then. As to any recreation with 


70 | Works of Charles Dickens 


other children of my age, I had very little of that; for the - 
gloomy theology of the Murdstones made all children out to 
be a swarm of little vipers (though there was a child once 
set in the midst of the Disciples), and held that they con- 
taminated one another. 

The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, 
for some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, 
and dogged. I was not made the less so by my sense of 
being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my 
mother. 1 believe I should have been almost stupefied but 
for one circumstance. 

It was this. My father had left a small collection of 
books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for 
it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house 
ever troubled. From that blessed little room Roderick Ran- 
dom, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The 
Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson 
Crusoe came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. 
They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond 
that place and time—they, and the Arabian Nights, and 
the Tales of the Genii—and did me no harm; for whatever 
harm was in some of them was not there for me; J knew 
nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now how I found 
time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over 
heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious 
to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small 
troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating 
my favorite characters in them—as I did—and by putting 
Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones—which I did, 
too. I have been Tom Jones (a child’s Tom Jones, a harm- 
less creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own 
idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily 
believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages 
and Travels—I forget what now—that were on those shelves; 
and for days and days I can remember to have gone about 
my region of our house armed with the center-piece out of 
an old set of boot-trees—with perfect realization of Captain 


David @opperfield 71 


Be rabaay. of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being 
beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. 
The Captain never lost dignity, for having his ears boxed 
with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was 
a captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all 
the languages in the world, dead or alive. 

This wasmy only and my constant comfort. When I think 
of it, the picture always rises in my mind of a summer even- 
ing, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my 
bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighborhood, 
every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard 
had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with 
these books, and stood for some locality made famous in 
them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church- 
steeple; 1 have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his 
back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and | 
know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. 
Pickle, in the parlor of cur little village alehouse. 

The reader now understands, as well as I do, what I was 
when | came to that point of my youthful history to which 
I am now coming again. 

One morning, when | went into the parlor with my books, 
I found my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking 
firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding something round the bottom 
of a cane—a lithe and limber cane, which he left off binding 
when I came in, and poised and switched in the air. 

*‘T tell you, Clara,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘“‘I have been 
often flogged myself.”’ 

‘*To be sure; of course,’’ said Miss Murdstone. 

‘Certainly, my dear Jane,”’ faltered my mother, meekly. 
‘‘But—but do you think it did Edward good?”’ 

‘Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?’’ asked Mr. 
Murdstone, gravely. 

““That’s the point!’’ said his sister. 

To this my mother returned, ‘Certainly, my dear Jane,”’ 
and said no more. 

I felt apprehensive that 1 was personally interested in this 


72 Works of Charles Dickens 


dialogue, and sought Mr. Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on 
mine. 

‘‘Now, David,’’ he said—and 1 saw that cast again, as he 
said it—‘‘you must be far more careful to-day than usual.” 
He gave the cane another poise, and another switch, and 
having finished his preparation of it laid it down beside him, 
with an expressive Jook, and took up his book. 

This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a 
beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not 
one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page. I tried 
to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, 
to have put sates on, and to skim away from me with a 
smoothness there was no checking. 

We began badly, and went on worse. 1 had come in 
with an idea of distinguishing myself rather, conceiving 
that 1 was very well prepared; but it turned out to be quite 
a mistake. Book after book was added to the heap of fail- 
ures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the 
time. And when we came at last to the five thousand 
cheeses (canes he made it that day, I remember) my mother 
burst out crying. 

‘‘Clara!’’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice. 

‘‘] am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,’’ said my 
mother. 

I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and 
said, taking up the cane: 

‘‘Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to .bear, with 
perfect firmness, the worry and torment that David has occa- 
sioned her to-day. That would be stoical: Clara is greatly 
strengthened and improved, but we can hardly expect so 
much from her. David, you and I will go upstairs, boy.”’ 

As he took me out at the door, my mother ran toward us. 
Miss Murdstone said: ‘‘Clara! are you a perfect fool?”’ and 
interfered. 1 saw my mother stop her ears then, and I heard 
her crying. 

He walked me up to my room, slowly and gravely—I am 
certain he had a delight in that formal parade of executing 


David @opperfield "3 


justice—and when we got there, suddenly twisted my head 
under his arm. 

‘‘Mr. Murdstone! Sir!’’? I cried tohim. ‘‘Don’t! Pray 
don’t beat me! I have tried to learn, sir, but I can’t learn 
while you and Miss Murdstone are by. 1 can’t, indeed!’ 

**Can’t you, indeed, David?’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll try that.’’ 

He had my head as in a vise, but I twined round him, 
somehow, and stopped him for a moment, entreating him not 





WE CAME AT LAST TO THE fIVE THOUSAND CHEESES 


to beat me. It was only for a moment that I stopped him, 
for he cut me heavily an instant afterward, and in the same 
instant I caught the hand with which he held me in my 
mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through. I1t sets my 
teeth on edge to think of it. 

He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. 
Above all the noise we made, 1 heard them running up the 
stairs, and crying out—I heard my mother crying out—and 
Peggotty. Then he was gone; and the door was locked 


4 Works of Charles Dickens 


outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and— 
sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor. 

How well I recollect, when 1 became quiet, what an un- 
natural stillness seemed to reign through the whole house! 
How well I remember, when my smart and passion began to 
cool, how wicked | began to feel! 

I sat listening fora long while, but there was not a sound. 
I crawled up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so 
swollen, red, and ugly that it almost frightened me. My 
stripes were sore and stiff, and made me cry afresh, when 
I moved; but they were nothing to the guilt I felt. It lay 
heavier on my breast than if I had been a most atrocious 
criminal, I dare say. 

It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window 
(I had been lying, for the most part, with my head upon the 
sill, by turns crying, dozing, and looking listlessly out), when 
the key was turned, and Miss Murdstone came in with some 
bread and meat, and milk. These she put down upon the 
table without a word, glaring at me the while with exem- 
plary firmness, and then retired, locking. the door after her. 

Long after it was dark | sat there, wondering whether 
anybody else would come. When this appeared improbable 
for that night, 1 undressed and went to bed; and there I 
began to wonder fearfully what would be done to me. 
Whether it was a criminal act that I had committed? 
Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to prison? 
Whether I was at all in danger of being hanged? 

I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being 
cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being 
weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remem- 
brance. Miss Murdstone reappeared before 1 was out of bed; 
told me, in so many words, that I was free to walk in the 
garden for half an hour and no longer; and retired, leay- 
ing the door open, that I might avail myself of that per- 
mission. 

I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, 
which lasted five days. If 1 could have seen my mother 


David @opperfield 45 


alone, I should have gone down on my knees to her and _ be- 
sought her forgiveness; but I saw no one, Miss Murdstone 
excepted, during the whole time—except at evening prayers 
in the parlor; to which I was escorted by Miss Murdstone 
after everybody else was placed, where I was stationed, a 
young outlaw, all alone by myself near the door, and whence 
I was solemnly conducted by my jailer, before any one arose 
from the devotional posture. I only observed that my mother 
was as far off from me as she could be, and kept her ‘face 
another way so that I never saw it, and that Mr. Murdstone’s 
‘hand was bound up in a large linen wrapper. 

The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to 
any one. They occupy the place of years in my remembrance. 
The way in which I listened to all the incidents of the house 
that made themselves audible to me; the ringing of bells, the 
opening and shutting of doors, the murmuring of voices, the 
footsteps on the stairs; to any laughing, whistling, or sing- 
ing, outside, which seemed more dismal than anything else 
to me in my solitude and disgrace—the uncertain pace of the 
hours, especially at night, when I would wake thinking it 
was morning, and find that the family were not yet gone to 
bed, and that all the length of night had yet to come—the 
depressed dreams and nightmares | had—the return of day, 
noon, afternoon, evening, when the boys played in the 
churchyard, and I watched them from a distance within 
the room, being ashamed to show myself at the window 
lest they should know I was a prisoner—the strange sen- 
sation of never hearing myself speak—the fleeting intervals 
of something like cheerfulness, which came with eating and 
drinking, and went away with it—the setting in of rain one 
evening, with a fresh smell, and its coming down faster and 
faster between me and the church, until it and gathering 
night seemed to quench me in gloom, and fear, and remorse 
—all this appears to have gone round and round for years 
instead of days, it is so vividly and strongly stamped on my 
remembrance. : 

On the last night of my restraint, I was awakened by 


76 Works of Charles Diekens 


hearing my own name spoken in a whisper. I started up in 
bed, and putting out my arms in the dark, said: 

‘‘Ts that you, Peggotty?” 

~ There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard 
my name again, in a tone so very mysterious and awful that 
1 think I should have gone into a fit if it had not occurred 
to me that it must have come through the keyhole. 

1 groped my way to the door, and putting my own lips 
to the keyhole, whispered: 

‘*TIs that you, Peggotty, dear | 

‘*Yes, my own precious Davy,’’ she replied. ‘‘Be as soft: 
as a mouse, or the Cat’ll hear us.”’ 

I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and was sen- 
sible of the urgency of the case; her room being close by. 

‘‘How’s mama, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry with 
me?”’ 

1 could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the key- 
hole, as I was doing on mine, before she answered. ‘‘No. 
Not very.”’ 

‘‘What is going to be done with me, Peggotty, dear? Do 
you know?”’ 

‘‘School. Near London,’’ was Peggotty’s answer. I was 
obliged to get her to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time 
quite down my throat, in consequence of my having forgotten 
to take my mouth away from the keyhole and put my ear 
there; and though her words tickled me a good deal, I didn’t 
hear them. 

‘*When, Peggotty?”’ 

‘*To-morrow.’”’ 

‘‘Ts that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes 
out of my drawers?’’ which she had done, though I have 
forgotten to mention it. 

‘*Yes,’’ said Peggotty. ‘‘Box.’’ 

**Shan’t I see mama?”’ 

‘“Yes,’’ said Peggotty. ‘‘Morning.”’ 

Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and 
delivered these words through it with as much feeling and 


99) : 


David @opperfield C72 


earnestness as a keyhole has ever been the medium of com- 
municating, I will venture to assert; shooting in each broken 
little sentence in a convulsive little burst of its own: 

*‘Davy, dear. If I ain’t been azackly as intimate with 
you. Lately, as I used to be. It ain’t because 1 don’t love 
you. Just as well and more, my pretty poppet. It’s because 
I thought it better for you. And for some one else, besides. 
Davy, my darling, are you listening? Can you hear?’’ 

“*VYe—ye—ye—yes, Peggotty!’’ I sobbed. 

‘“‘My own!’ said Peggotty, with infinite compassion. 
“What I want to sayis. That you must never forget me. 
For [ll never forget you. And I’ll take as much care of 
your mama, Davy. As I ever took of you. And 1 won’t 
leave her. The day may come when she’ll be glad to lay her 
poor head. On her stupid, cross old Peggotty’s arm again. 
And JI’ll write to you, my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar. 
And PIN—VU—’’ Peggotty fell to kissing the keyhole, as 
she couldn’t kiss me. 

‘‘Thank you, dear Peggotty!’’ said I. ‘‘Oh, thank you! 
Thank you! Will you promise me one thing, Peggotty? 
Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and little Km’ly and 
Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am not so bad as they 
might suppose, and that I sent ’em all my love—especially 
to little Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?”’ 

The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the key- 
hole with the greatest affection—I patted it with my hand, 
I recollect, as if it had been her honest face—and parted. 
From that night there grew up in my breast a feeling for 
Peggotty which I cannot very well define. 

She did not replace my mother; no one could do that; 
but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon 
her, and I felt toward her something I have never felt for 
any other human being. It was a sort of comical affection, 
too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should 
have done, or how 1 should have acted out the tragedy it 
would have been to me. 

In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and 


"8 Works of Charles Diekens 


told me I was going to school, which was not altogether such 
news to measshe supposed. She also informed me that when 
I was dressed, 1 was to come downstairs into the parlor and 
have my breakfast. There, I found my mother, very pale 
and with red eyes; into whose arms I ran, and begged her 
pardon from my suffering soul. 

‘‘Oh, Davy!’ she said. ‘‘That you could hurt any one 
llove! Try to be better, pray to be better! I forgive you; 





I SAW, TO MY AMAZEMENT, PEGGOTTY BURST FROM A HEDGE AND CLIMB INTO THE CART 


but I am so grieved, Davy, that you should have such bad 
passions in your heart.”’ 

They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and 
she was more sorry for that than for my going away. I felt 
it sorely. I tried to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears 
dropped upon my bread-and-butter, and trickled into my tea. 
I saw my mother look at me sometimes, and then glance at 
the watchful Miss Murdstone, and then look down, or look 
away. 


David Gopperfield 79 


‘Master Copperfield’s box there?’’ said Miss Murdstone, 
when wheels were heard at the gate. 

I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor 
Mr. Murdstone appeared. My former acquaintance, the car- 
rier, was at the door; the box was taken out to his cart, and 
lifted in. 

**Clara!’’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note. 

‘‘Ready, my dear Jane,’’ returned my mother. ‘‘Good- 
by, Davy. You are going for your own good. Good-by, 
my child. You will come home in the holidays,‘and be a 
better boy.”’ 

**Clara!’’? Miss Murdstone repeated. 

‘“‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’’ replied my mother, who was 
holding me. ‘‘I forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you!’’ 

“‘Clara!’’ Miss Murdstone repeated. 

Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the 
cart, and to say on the way that she hoped I would repent, 
before I came to a bad end; and then I got into the cart, and 
the lazy horse walked off with it. 


CHAPTER FIVE 
I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME 


WE might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket- 
handkerchief was quite wet through, when the carrier stopped 
short. | 

Looking out to ascertain for what, I saw, to my amaze- 
ment, Peggotty burst from a hedge and climb into the cart. 
She took me in both her arms, and squeezed me to her stays 
until the pressure on my nose was extremely painful, though 
I never thought of that till afterward, when I found it very 
tender. Not a single word did Peggotty speak. Releasing 
one of her arms, she put it down in her pocket to the elbow, 


80 Works of @harles Dickens 


and brought out some paper bags of cakes which she crammed 
into my pockets, and a purse which she put into my hand, 
but not one word did she say. After another and a final 
squeeze with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran 
away; and my belief is, and has always been, without a 
solitary button on her gown. I picked up one of several 
that was rolling about, and treasured it as a keepsake for 
a long time. 

The carrier looked at me as if to inquire if she were com- 
ing back. I shook my head, and said I thought not. ‘‘Then 
come up,’’ said the carrier to the lazy horse, who came up 
accordingly. 

Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I 
began to think it was of no use crying any more, especially 
as neither Roderick Random nor that Captain in the Royal 
British Navy had ever cried, that I could remember, in 
trying situations. The carrier, seeing me in this resolution, 
proposed that my pocket-handkerchief should be spread upon 
the horse’s back to dry. I thanked him and assented; and 
particularly small it looked under those circumstances. 

I had now leisure to examine the purse. It was a stiff 
leather purse, with a snap, and had three bright shillings in 
it, which Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening 
for my greater delight. But its- precious contents were two 
half-crowns folded together in a bit of paper, on which was 
written, in my mother’s hand, ‘‘For Davy. With my love.’’ 
1 was so overcome by this that I asked the carrier to be so 
good as reach me my pocket-handkerchief again, but he said 
he thought I had better do without it; and I thought I really 
had; so I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and stopped myself. 

For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous 
emotions, I was still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. 
After we had jogged on for some little time, 1 asked the 
carrier if he was going all the way. 

‘All the way where?’’ inquired the carrier. 

‘*There,’’ I said. 

‘‘Where’s there?’’ inquired the carrier. 


David Copperfield 81 


‘‘Near London,”’ I said. 

‘*Why, that horse,’’ said the carrier, jerking the rein to 
point him out, ‘‘would be deader than pork afore he got over 
half the ground.’’ 

‘*Are you only going to Yarmouth, then?’’ I asked. 

. **That’s about it,”’ said the carrier. ‘‘And there I shall 
take you to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that’ll take 
you to—wherever it is.”’ 

As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was 
Mr. Barkis) to say—he being, as 1 observed in a former 
chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all con- 
versational—l offered him a cake as a mark of attention, 
which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and 
which made no more impression on his big face than it 
would have done on an elephant’s. 

*‘Did she make ’em, now?’ said Mr. Barkis, always 
leaning forward, in his slouching way, on the footboard of 
the cart with an arm on each knee. 

**Peggotty, do you mean, sir?’”’ 

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘‘Her.’’ 

““Yes. She makes all our pastry and does all our cook- 
‘To she, though?”’ said Mr. Barkis. 

He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but he didn’t 
whistle. He sat looking at the horse’s ears, as if he saw 
something new there; and sat so for a considerable time. 
By-and-by he said: 

‘*No sweethearts, I b’lieve?”’ 

‘‘Sweetmeats, did you say, Mr. Barkis?’’. For I thought 
he wanted something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded 
to that description of refreshment, 

‘‘Hearts,’’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘‘Sweethearts; no one walks 
with her!”’ 

‘With Peggotty?”’ 

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘‘Her.”’ 

“Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.”’ 

**Didn’t she, though!’’ said Mr. Barkis. 


ing 


82 Works of Charles Dickens 


Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he 
didn’t whistle, but sat looking at the horse’s ears. 

‘‘So she makes,” said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval 
of reflection, ‘‘all the apple parsties, and does all the cooking, 
do she?”’ 

1 replied that such was the fact. 

‘Well. Ll tell you what,’’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘*P’raps 
you might be writin’ to her?’’ 

‘*T shall certainly write to her,’’ I rejoined. 

‘*Ah!’’? he said, slowly turning his eyes toward me. 
‘““Well! If you-was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect 
to say that Barkis was willin’; would you?”’ ; 

‘That Barkis is willing,’’? I repeated, innocently. ‘‘Is 
that all the message?’’ 

‘“VYe—es,’’ he said, considering. ‘‘Ye—es. - Barkis is 
willin’.”’ 

‘*But you will be at Blunderstone again to-morrow, Mr. 
Barkis,’’ 1 said, faltering a little at the idea of my being far 
away from it then, ‘‘and could give your own message so 
much better.”’ | | 

As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk 
of his head, and once more confirmed his previous request 
by saying with profound gravity, ‘‘Barkis is willin’. That’s 
the message,’’ I readily undertook its transmission. While 
[ was waiting for the coach in the hotel at Yarmouth that 
very afternoon, | procured a sheet of paper and an inkstand, 
and wrote a note to Peggotty which ran thus: ‘‘My dear 
Peggotty. 1 have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My 
love to mama. Yours affectionately. P.S.—He says he 
particularly wants you to know—Barkis is willing.’’ 

When I had taken this commission on myself prospec- 
tively, Mr. Barkis had relapsed into perfect silence; and I, 
feeling quite worn out by all that had happened lately, lay 
down on a sack in the cart and fell asleep. I slept soundly 
until we got to Yarmouth; which was so entirely new and 
strange to me in the inn-yard to which we drove, that I at 
once abandoned a latent hope that I had had of meeting 


David Copperfield 83 


some of Mr. Peggotty’s family there, perhaps even with 
little Em/’ly herself. 

The coach was in the yard, shining very much all over, 
but without any horses to it as yet; and it looked in that 
state as if nothing was more unlikely than its ever going 
to London. I was thinking of this, and wondering what 
would ultimately become of my box, which Mr. Barkis had 
put down on the yard pavement by the pole (he having 
driven up the yard to turn his cart), and also what would 
ultimately become of me, when a lady looked out of a bow- 
window where some fowls and joints of meat were hanging 
up, and said: 

“*Ts that the little gentleman from Blunderstone?”’ 

‘“Yes, ma’am,’’ | said. 

‘*What name?’’ inquired the lady. 

‘<Copperfield, ma’am,’’ I said. 

‘“‘That won’t do,’’ returned the lady. ‘‘Nobody’s dinner 
is paid for here, in that name.”’ 

“Ts it Murdstone, ma’am?”’ I said. 

‘If you’re Master Murdstone,’’ said the lady, ‘‘why do 
you go and give another name, first?”’ 

I explained to the lady how it was, who then rang a bell, 
and called out: ‘‘ William! show the coffee-room!’’ upon 
which a waiter came running out of a kitchen on the opposite 
side of the yard to show it, and seemed a good deal surprised 
when he found he was only to show it to me. 

It was a large long room with some large maps in it. I 
doubt if 1 could have felt much stranger if the maps had 
been real foreign countries, and I cast away in the middle 
of them. I felt it was taking a liberty to sit down, with 
my cap in my hand, on the corner of the chair nearest the 
door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on purpose for me, 
and put a set of castors on it, 1 think 1 must have turned 
red all over with modesty. 

He brought me some chops and vegetables, and took the 
covers off in such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I 
must have given him some offense. But he greatly relieved 


84. Works of Charles Dickens 


my mind by putting a chair for me at the table, and saying, 
very affably, ‘‘ Now, six-foot! come on!’ 

I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found 
it extremely difficult to handle my knife and fork with any- 
thing like dexterity, or to avoid splashing myself with the 
gravy, while he was standing opposite, staring so hard, and 
making me blush in the most dreadful manner every time I 
caught his eye. After watching me into the second chop, 
he said: 

‘‘There’s half a pint of ale for you. Will you have it 
now?”’ 

I thanked him and said ‘‘Yes.’? Upon which he poured 
it out of a jug into a large tumbler, and held it up against 
the light, and made it look beautiful. 

‘“My eye!”’ he said. ‘‘1lt seems a good deal, don’t it?’’ 

‘‘Tt does seem a good deal,’’ 1 answered, with a smile. 
For it was quite delightful to me to find him so pleasant. 
He was a twinkling-eyed, pimple-faced man, with his hair 
standing upright all over his head; and as he stood with 
one arm a-kimbo, holding up the glass to the light with the 
other hand, he looked quite friendly. 

‘‘There was a gentleman here yesterday,’’ he said—‘‘a 
stout gentleman, by the name of Topsawyer—perhaps you 
know him?”’ 

‘*No,’’ I said, ‘‘1 don’t think—”’ 

‘‘In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, gray coat, 
speckled choaker,’’ said the waiter. 

‘*No,’’ I said, bashfully, ‘‘I haven’t the pleasure—’’ 

‘*He came in here,’’ said the waiter, looking at the light 
through the tumbler, ‘‘ordered a glass of this ale—would 
order it—Il told him not—drank it, and fell dead. It was 
too old for him. It oughtn’t to be drawn, that’s the fact.”’ 

1 was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy acci- 
dent, and said 1 thought I had better have some water. 

‘‘Why, you see,’’ said the waiter, still looking at the light 
through the tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, ‘‘our 
people don’t like things being ordered and left. It offends 


David Copperfield 85 


’em. But Jl] drink it, if you like. I’m used to it, and use 
is everything. I don’t think it will hurt me, if I throw my 
head back, and take it off quick. Shall 1?”’ 

I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, 
if he thought he could do it safely, but by no means other- 
wise. When he did throw his head back and take it off 
quick, 1 had a horrible fear, I confess, of seeing him meet 
the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on 
the carpet. But it didn’t hurt him. On the contrary, 1 
thought he seemed the fresher for it, 

‘‘What have We got here?’’ he said, putting a fork into 
my dish. ‘‘Not chops?’’ 

**Chops,’’ 1 said. 

‘*Lord bless my soul!’’ he exclaimed, ‘‘I didn’t know they 
were chops. Why, achop’s the very thing to take off the bad 
effects of that beer! Ain’t it lucky?’’ 

So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato 
in the other, and ate away with a very good appetite, to my 
extreme satisfaction. He afterward tock another chop, and 
another potato, and after that another chop and another 
potato. When we had done, he brought me a pudding, and 
having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become 
absent in his mind for some moments. 

‘*How’s the pie?”’ he said, rousing himself. 

**It’s a pudding,’’ I made answer. 

‘‘Pudding!”’ he exclaimed. ‘‘Why, bless me, so it is! 
What!’ looking at it nearer. ‘*‘You don’t mean to say it’s 
a batter pudding!’’ 

‘*Yes, it is indeed.”’ ; 

‘*Why, a batter-pudding,’’ he said, taking up a tablespoon, 
‘fig my favorite pudding! Ain’t that lucky? Come on, 
little ’un, and let’s see who’ll get most.’’ 

The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more 
than once to come in and win, but what with his tablespoon 
to my teaspoon, his dispatch to my dispatch, and his appetite 
to my appetite, 1 was left far behind at the first mouthful, 
and had no chance with him. I never saw any one enjoy 


56 Works of Charles Dickens 


a pudding so much, I think; and he laughed when it was 
all gone, as if his enjoyment of it lasted still. 

Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was 
then that I asked for the pen and ink and paper to write to 
Peggotty. He not only brought it immediately, but was 
good enough to look over me while | wrote the letter. When 
I had finished it, he asked where I was going to school. 

I said, ‘‘Near London,’’ which was all I knew. 

“‘Oh, my eye!’’ he said, looking very low-spirited, ‘‘I 
am sorry for that.”’ 

‘‘Why?’’ I asked him. 

“‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, shaking his head, ‘‘that’s the school 
where they broke the boy’s ribs—two ribs—a little boy he 
was. I should say he was—let me see—how old are you, 
about?”’ 

I told him between eight and nine. 

‘“‘That’s just his age,’’ he said. ‘‘He was eight years 
and six months old when they broke his first rib; eight 
years and eight months old when they broke his second, 
and did for him.’’ 

I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that 
this was an uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it 
was done. His answer was not cheering to my spirits, for 
it consisted of two dismal words: ‘‘ With whopping.”’ 

The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a season- 
‘able diversion, which made me get up and hesitatingly 
inquire, in the mingled pride and diffidence of having a 
purse (which I took out of my pocket), if there were any- 
thing to pay. 

‘‘There’s a sheet of letter-paper,’’ he returned. ‘‘Did you 
ever buy a sheet of letter-paper?’”’ 

I could not remember that 1 ever had. 

‘*Tt’s dear,’’ he said, ‘‘on account of the duty. Three- 
pence. That’s the way weare taxed in this country. There’s 
nothing else, except the waiter. Never mind the ink. J 
lose by that.”’ 

‘What should you—what should I—how much ought 


David Copperfield 87 


I to—what would it be right to pay the waiter, if you 
please?’’ I stammered, blushing. 

*“‘If ET hadn’t a family, and that family hadn’t the cow- 
-pock,’’ said the waiter, ‘‘I wouldn’t take a sixpence. If I 
didn’t support a aged pairint, and a lovely sister’’—here the 
waiter was greatly agitated—‘‘I wouldn’t take a farthing. 
If I had a good place, and was treated well here, I should 
beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of it. But I live 
on broken wittles—and I sleep on the coals’’—here the waiter 
burst into tears. — 

I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt 
that any recognition short of ninepence would be mere bru- 
tality and hardness of heart. 

Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings, 
which he received with much humility and veneration, and 
spun up with his thumb, directly afterward, to try the good- 
ness of. 

It was a little disconcerting to me to find, when | was 
being helped up behind the coach, that 1 was supposed to 
have eaten all the dinner without any assistance. I dis- 
covered this from overhearing the lady in the bow-window 
say to the guard, ‘‘Take care of that child, George, or he’ll 
burst!’ and from observing that the women-servants who 
were about the place came out to look and giggle at me as 
a young phenomenon. My unfortunate friend the waiter, 
who had quite recovered his spirits, did not appear to be 
disturbed by this, but joined in the general admiration with- 
out being at all confused. If I had any doubt of him, I sup- 
pose this half-awakened it; but I am inclined to believe that 
with the simple confidence of a child, and the natural reliance 
of a child upon superior years (qualities I am very sorry any 
children should prematurely change for worldly wisdom), I 
had no serious mistrust of him on the whole, even then. 

I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made without de- 
serving it the subject of jokes between the coachman and 
guard as to the coach drawing heavy behind, on account of 
my sitting there, and as to the greater expediency of my 


88 Works of Charles Diekens 


traveling by wagon. The story of my supposed appetite 
getting wind among the outside passengers, they were merry 
upon it likewise, and asked me whether I was going to be 
paid for, at school, as two brothers or three, and whether I 
was contracted for, or went upon the regular terms; with 
other pleasant questions. But the worst of it was that I 
knew I should be ashamed to eat anything when an oppor- 
tunity offered, and that, after a rather light dinner, I should 
remain hungry all night—for I had left my cakes behind, at 
the hotel, in my hurry. My apprehensions were realized. 
When we stopped for supper I couldn’t muster courage to 
take any, though 1 should have liked it very much, but sat 
by the fire and said 1 didn’t want anything. This did not 
save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced gentle-- 
man with a rough face, who had been eating out of a sand- 
wich box nearly all the way, except when he had been drink- 
ing out of a bottle, said I was like a boa-constrictor, who took 
enough at one meal to last him a long time; after which he 
actually brought a rash out upon himself with boiled beef. 

We started from Yarmouth at three o’clock in the after- 
noon, and we were due in London about eight next morn- 
ing. It was midsummer weather, and the evening was very 
pleasant. When we passed through a village I pictured to 
myself what the insides of the houses were like, and what 
the inhabitants were about; and when boys came running 
after us, and got up behind and swung there for a little way, 
I wondered whether their fathers were alive, and whether 
they were happy at home. I had plenty to think of, there- 
fore, besides my mind running continually on the kind of 
place 1 was going to—which was an awful speculation. 
Sometimes, | remember, I resigned myself to thoughts of 
home and Peggotty; and to endeavoring, in a confused blind 
way, to recall how I had felt, and what sort of a boy I used 
to be before 1 bit Mr. Murdstone—which I couldn’t satisfy 
myself about by any means, I seemed to have bitten him in 
such remote antiquity. 

The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got 


David Copperfield 89 


chilly; and being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced 
one and another) to prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was 
nearly smothered by their falling asleep and completely block- 
ing me up. They squeezed me so hard sometimes that I 
could not help crying out ‘‘Oh, if you please!’’—which they 
didn’t like at all, because it woke them. Opposite me was 
an elderly lady in a great fur cloak, who looked in the dark 
more like a haystack than a lady, she was wrapped up to 
such a degree. This lady had a basket with her, and she 
hadn’t known what to do with it for a long time, until she 
found that, on account of my legs being short, it could go 
underneath me. It cramped and hurt me so that it made me 
perfectly miserable; but if I moved in the least and made a 
glass that was in the basket rattle against something else (as 
it was sure to do), she gave me the cruelest poke with her 
foot, and said, ‘‘Come, don’t yow fidget. Yowr bones are 
young enough, I’m sure!’ 

At last the sun rose, and then my companions seemed to 
sleep easier. The difficulties under which they had labored 
all night, and which had found utterance in the most terrific 
gasps and snorts, are not to be conceived. As the sun got 
higher, their sleep became lighter, and so they gradually one 
by one awoke. I recollect being very much surprised by the 
feint everybody made, then, of not having been to sleep at 
all, and by the uncommon indignation with which every one 
repelled the charge. I labor under the same kind of aston- 
ishment to this day, having invariably observed that of all 
human weaknesses the one to which our common nature is 
the least disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is the 
weakness of having gone to sleep in a coach. 

What an amazing place London was to me when I saw 
it in the distance, and how I believed all the adventures of 
all my favorite heroes to be constantly enacting and re-enact- 
ing there, and how I vaguely made it out in my own mind to 
be fuller of wonders and wickedness than all the cities of the 
earth, I need not stop here to relate. 

We approached it by degrees, and got, in due time, to the 


90 Works of Charles Dickens 


inn in the Whitechapel district, for which we were bound. I 
forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or Blue Boar; but it was ~ 
Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted upon the 
back of the coach. 

The guard’s eye lighted on me as he was Sed ge down, 
and he said at the booking-office door: 

‘‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster booked in the 
name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, to be left 
till called for?”’ 

Nobody answered. 

‘“Try Copperfield, if you please, sir,’? said I, looking 
helplessly down. 

‘‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster, booked in the 
name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, but own- 
ing to the name of Copperfield, to be left till called for?’’ said 
the guard. ‘‘Come! Js there anybody?”’ 

No. There was nobody. I looked anxiously around; 
but the inquiry made no impression on any of the by-stand- 
ers, if I except a man in gaiters, with one eye, who suggested 
that they had better puta brass collar round my neck, and 
tie me up in the stable. 

A ladder was brought, and I got down after the lady 
who was like a haystack—not daring to stir, until her basket 
was removed. The coach was clear of passengers by that 
time, the luggage was very soon cleared out, the horses had 
been taken out before the luggage, and now the coach itself 
was wheeled and backed off by some hostlers, out of the 
way. Still, nobody appeared to claim the dusty youngster 
from Blunderstone, Suffolk. 

More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to 
look at him, and see that he was solitary, I went into the 
booking-office, and, by invitation of the clerk on duty, passed 
behind the counter, and sat down on the scale at which they 
weighed the luggage. Here, as I sat looking at the parcels, 
packages, and books, and inhaling the smell of stables (ever 
since associated with that morning), a procession of most 
tremendous considerations began to march through my mind. 


David Copperfield 9] 


Supposing nobody should ever fetch me, how long would 
they consent to keep me there? Would they keep me long 
enough to spend seven shillings? Should I sleep at night in 
one of those wooden bins, with the other luggage, and wash 
myself at the pump in the yard in the morning; or should 1 
be turned out every night, and expected to come again to be 
left till called for, when the office opened next day? Sup- 
posing there was no mistake in the case, and Mr. Murdstone 
had devised this plan to get rid of me, what should I do? If 
they allowed me to remain there until my seven shillings 
were spent, I couldn’t hope to remain there when I began to 
starve. That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleas- 
ant to the customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever 
it was, the risk of funeral expenses. If I started off at once, 
and tried to walk back home, how could I ever find my way, 
how could I ever hope to walk so far, how could I make sure 
of any one but Peggotty, even if I got back? If I found 
out the nearest proper authorities, and offered myself to go 
for a soldier or a sailor, 1 was such a little fellow that it was 
most likely they wouldn’t take me in. These thoughts, and 
a hundred other such thoughts, turned me burning hot, and 
made me giddy with apprehension and dismay. I was in 
the height of my fever when a man entered and whispered 
to the clerk, who presently slanted me off the scale, and 
pushed me over to him, as if I were weighed, bought, de- 
livered, and paid for. 

As I went out of the office hand-in-hand with this new 
acquaintance, I stole a look at him. He was a gaunt, sal- 
low young man, with hollow cheeks, and chin almost as 
black as Mr. Murdstone’s; but there the likeness ended, for 
his whiskers were shaved off, and his hair, instead of being 
glossy, was dusty and dry. He was dressed in a suit of 
black clothes which were rather rusty and dry, too, and 
rather short in the sleeves and legs; and he had a white 
neckerchief on that was not over clean. 1 did not, and do 
not, suppose that this neckerchief was all the linen he 
wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of. 


92 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘*You’re the new boy?’’ he said. 

«CY 68, Sit 2alssald. 

1 supposed I was. I didn’t know. 

‘*T’m one of the masters at Salem House,”’ he said. 

I made him a bow and felt very much overawed. I was 
so ashamed to allude to a commonplace thing like my box, 
to a scholar and a master at Salem House, that we had gone 
some little distance from the yard before I had the hardihood 
to mention it. We turned back on my humbly insinuating 
that it might be useful to me hereafter; and he told the clerk 
that the carrier had instructions to call for it at noon. 

‘“‘1f you please, sir,’’? I said, after we had accomplished 
about the same distance as before, ‘‘is it far?’ 

‘“*Tt’s down by Blackheath,’’ he said. 

“Is that far, sir?’’ I diffidently asked. 

‘It’s a good step,’’ he said. ‘‘We shall go by the stage- 
coach, It’s about six miles.’’ 

I was so faint and tired that the idea of holding out for 
six miles more was too much for me. I took heart to tell 
him that I had had nothing all night, and that if he would 
allow me to buy something to eat I should be very much 
obliged to him. He appeared surprised at this—I see him 
stop and look at me now—and after considering for a few 
moments said he wanted to call on an old person who lived 
not far off, and that the best way would be for me to buy 
some bread, or whatever I liked best that was wholesome, 
and make my breakfast at her house, where we could get 
some milk. J 

Accordingly we looked in at the baker’s window, and 
after I had made a series of proposals to buy everything that 
was bilious in the shop, and he had rejected them one by 
one, we decided in favor of a nice little loaf of brown bread, 
which cost me threepence. Then, at a grocer’s shop, we 
bought an egg and a slice of streaky bacon; which still left 
what I thought a good deal of change, out of the second of 
the bright shillings, and made me consider London a very 
cheap place. These provisions laid in, we went on through 


David Copperfield 93 


a great noise and uproar that confused my weary head be- 
yond description, and over a bridge which, no doubt, was 
London Bridge (indeed I think he told me so, but 1 was half- 
asleep), until we came to the poor person’s house, which was 
a part of some alms-houses, as I knew by their look, and by 
an inscription on a stone over the gate, which said they were 
established for twenty-five poor women. 

The master at Salem House lifted the latch’of one of a 
number of little black doors that were all alike, and had each 
a little diamond-paned window on one side, and another lit- 
tle diamond-paned window above; and he went into the lit- 
tle house of one of these poor old women, who was blowing 
a fire to make a little saucepan boil. On seeing the master 
enter, the old woman stopped with the bellows on her knee, 
and said something that I thought sounded like ‘‘My Char- 
ley!’ but on seeing me come in, too, she got up, and rub- 
bing her hands made a confused sort of half-curtsey. 

‘*Can you cook this young gentleman’s breakfast for him, 
if you please?’’ said the master at Salem House. 

*‘Can 1?’ said the old woman. ‘‘ Yes, can I, sure!”’ 

‘“‘How’s Mrs. Fibbitson to-day?’’ said the master, look- 
ing at another old woman in a large chair by the fire, who 
was such a bundle of clothes that I feel grateful to this hour 
for not having sat upon her by mistake. 

‘Ah! she’s poorly,” said the first old woman. ‘“‘It’s one 
of her bad days. If the fire was to go out, through any ac- 
cident, I verily believe she’d go out, too, and never come to 
life again.”’ 

As they looked at her, I looked at her also. Although it 
was a warm day, she seemed to think of nothing but the fire. 
I fancied she was jealous even of the saucepan on it; and | 
have reason to know that she took its impressment into the 
service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon in dudgeon; 
for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist 
at me once, when those culinary operations were going on, 
and no one else was looking. The sun streamed in at the 
little window, but she sat with her own back and the back 


94. Works of Charles Diekens 


of the large chair toward it, screening the fire as if she were 
sedulously keeping 7f warm, instead of it keeping her warm, 
and watching it in a most distrustful manner. The com- 
pletion of the preparations for my breakfast, by relieving the 
fire, gave her such extreme joy that she laughed aloud—and 
a very unmelodious laugh she had, I must say. 

I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my rasher of 
bacon, with-a basin of milk besides, and made a most de- 
licious meal: While I was yet in the full enjoyment of it, 
the old woman of the house said to the master: 

‘‘Have you got your flute with you?”’ 

‘*Yes,’’ he returned. 

‘‘Have a blow at it,’? said the old woman, coaxingly. 
“To! 4? 

The master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts 
of his coat, and brought out his flute in three pieces, which 
he screwed together, and began immediately to play. My 
impression is, after many years of consideration, that there 
never can have been anybody in the world who played worse. 
He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced 
by any means, natural or artificial. I don’t know what the 
tunes were—if there were such things in the performance at 
all, which I doubt—but the influence of the strain upon me 
- was, first, to make me think of all my sorrows until I could — 
hardly keep my tears back; then to take away my appetite; © 
and lastly to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t keep my eyes 
open. They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the 
recollection rises fresh upon me. Once more the little room 
with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, 
and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, 
and its three peacock’s feathers displayed over the mantel- 
piece—I remember wondering when I first went in what that 
peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery 
was doomed to come to—fades from before me, and I nod, 
and sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of the 
coach are heard instead, and I am on my journey. The 
coach jolts, | wake with a start, and the flute has come back 


David @opperfield 95 


again, and the master at Salem House is sitting with his 
legs crossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman of 
the house looks on delighted. She fades in her turn, and he 
fades, and all fades, and there is no flute, no master, no 
Salem House, no David Copperfield, no anything but sleep. 

I dreamed, I thought, that once, while he was blowing — 
_ into this dismal flute, the old woman of the house, who had 
gone nearer and nearer to him in her ecstatic admiration, 
leaned over the back of his chair and gave him an affection- 
ate squeeze round the neck, which stopped his playing for a 
moment. I was in the middle state between sleeping and 
waking, either then or immediately afterward; for, as he re- 
sumed—it was a real fact that he had stopped playing—I 
saw and heard the same old woman ask Mrs. Fibbitson if it 
wasn’t delicious (meaning the flute), to which Mrs. Fibbit- 
son replied: ‘‘Ay, ay! Yes!’ and nodded at the fire—to 
which, | am persuaded, she gave the credit of the whole 
performance. 

When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the 
master at Salem House unscrewed his flute into the three 
pieces, put them up as before, and took me away. We found 
the coach very near at hand, and got upon the roof; but I 
was so dead sleepy, that when we stopped on the road to 
take up somebody else, they put me inside where there were 
no passengers, and where I slept profoundly, until I found 
the coach going at a footpace up a steep hill among green 
leaves. Presently, it stopped, and had come to its destina- 
tion. 

A short walk brought us—I mean the master and me—to 
Salem House, which was inclosed with a high brick wall, and 
looked very dull. Over a door in this wall was a board with 
SALEM HOovsE upon it; and through a grating in this door 
we were surveyed, when we rang the bell, by a surly face, 
which I found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout 
man with a bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, 
and his hair cut close all round his head. 

“The new boy,’’ said the master. 


96 Works of Charles Dickens 


The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over—it didn’t 
take long, for there was not much of me—and locked the 
gate behind us, and took out the key. We were going up to 
the house, among some dark heavy trees, when he called 
after my conductor: 

‘*Hallo!’’ 

We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a. 
little lodge, where he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand. 

‘Here! The cobbler’s been,’’ he said, ‘‘since you’ve 
been out, Mr. Mell, and he says he can’t mend ’em any 
more. He says there ain’t a bit of the original boot left, 
and he wonders you expect it.”’ | 

With these words he threw the boots toward Mr: Mell, 
who went back a few paces to pick them up, and looked at 
them (very disconsolately, I was afraid) as we went on to- 
gether. I observed then, for the first time, that the boots he 
had on were a good deal the worse for wear, and that his 
stocking was just breaking out in one place like a bud. 

Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of 
a bare and unfurnished appearance. All about it was so 
very quiet, that I said to Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were 
out; but he seemed surprised at my not knowing that it was 
holiday-time. That all the boys were at their several homes. 
That Mr. Creakle, the proprietor, was down by the seaside 
with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that I was sent in holiday- 
time as a punishment for my misdoing, all of which he ex- 
plained to me as we went along. 

I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me as 
the most forlorn and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it 
now. A long room, with three long rows of desks, and six 
of forms, and bristling all round with pegs for hats and 
slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises litter the 
dirty floor. Some silk-worms’ houses, made of the same 
materials, are scattered over the desks. Two miserable lit- 
tle white mice, left behind by their owner, are running up 
and down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and wire, 
looking in all the corners with their red eyes for anything to 


David @opperfield 97 


eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger than himself, makes 
a mournful rattle now and then in hopping on his perch, two 
inches high, or dropping from it; but neither sings nor 
chirps. There is a strange unwholesome smell upon the 
room like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting: air, 
and rotten books. There could not well be more ink splashed 
about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, 
and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink 
through the varying seasons of the year. 

Mr. Mell, having left me while he took his irreparable 
boots upstairs, I went softly to the upper end of the room, 
observing all this as I crept along. Suddenly I came upon a 
pasteboard placard, beautifully written, which was lying on 
the desk, and bore these words: ‘‘Take care of him. He 
Ortes.:” 

I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive of at least 
a great dog underneath. But. though I looked all round 
with anxious eyes, I could see nothing of him. I was still 
engaged in peering about, when Mr. Mell came back, and 
asked me what I did up there. 

*‘T beg your pardon, sir,’ 
looking for the dog.”’ 

**Dog?’’ says he. ‘‘ What dog?’’ 

**Isn’t it a dog, sir?”’ 

**TIsn’t what a dog?”’ 

‘*That’s to be taken care of, sir; that bites.’’ 

*‘No, Copperfield,’’ says he, gravely, ‘‘that’s not a dog. 
That’s a boy. My instructions are, Copperfield, to put this 
placard on your back. Iam sorry to make such a beginning 
with you, but I must do it.”’ 

With that, he took me down, and tied the placard, which 
was neatly constructed for the purpose, on my shoulders like 
a knapsack; and wherever I went, afterward, I had the con- 
solation of carrying it. 

What | suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine. 
Whether it was possible for people to see me or not, I always 
fancied that somebody was reading it. It was no relief to 

Vou. II—(A4) 


9 


says I, ‘‘if you please, 1’m 


98 Works of Charlies Dickens 


turn round and find nobody; for wherever my back was, 
there I imagined somebody always to be. That cruel man 
with the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in 
authority; and if he ever saw me leaning against a tree, or 
a wall, or the house, he roared out from his lodge-door in a 
stupendous voice: ‘‘Hallo, you, sir! You, Copperfield! Show 
that badge conspicuous, or [’ll report you!’ The playground 
was a bare graveled yard, open to all the back of the house 
and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the 
butcher read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in a 
word, who came backward and forward to the house of a 
morning, when I was ordered to walk there, read that I was 
to be taken care of, for I bit. I recollect that I positively 
began to have a dread of myself, as a kind of wild boy who 
did bite. | 

There was an old door in this playground, on which the 
boys had a custom of carving their names. 1t was complete- 
ly covered with such inscriptions. In my dread of the end 
of the vacation and their coming back, I could not read one 
boy’s name without inquiring in what tone and with what 
emphasis fe would read: ‘‘Take care of him. He bites.”’ 
There was one boy—a certain J. Steerforth—who cut his 
name very deep and very often, who, I conceived, would 
read it in a rather strong voice, and afterward pull my hair. 
There was another boy, one Tommy Traddles, who I dreaded 
would make game of it, and pretend to be dreadfully fright- 
ened of me. There was a third, George Demple, who I 
fancied would sing it. 1 have looked, a little shrinking 
creature, at that door, until the owners of all the names— 
there were five-and-forty of them in the school then, Mr. 
Mell said—seemed to send me to Coventry by general ac- 
clamation, and to cry out, each in his own way: ‘‘Take care 
of him. He bites!’’ | | 

it was the same with the places at the desks and forms. 
It was the same with the groves of deserted bedsteads 1 
peeped at on my way to, and, when I was in, my own bed. 
I remember dreaming, night after night, of being with my 


David @opperfield 99 


mother as she used to be, or of going to a party at Mr. Peg- 
gotty’s, or of traveling outside the stage-coach, or of dining 
again with my unfortunate friend the waiter, and in all 
these circumstances making people scream and stare by the 
unhappy disclosure that I had nothing on but my little night- 
shirt and that placard. 

In the monotony of my life, and in my constant appre- 
hension of the reopening of the school, it was such an insup- 
portable affliction! I had long tasks every day to do with 
Mr. Mell; but I did them, there being no Mr. and Miss 
Murdstone here, and got through them without disgrace. 
Before, and after them, 1 walked about—supervised, as I 
have mentioned, by the man with the wooden leg. How 
vividly 1 call to mind the damp about the house, the green 
cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky water-butt, and 
the discolored trunks of some of the grim trees, which seemed 
to have dripped more in the rain than other trees, and to 
have blown less in the sun! At one we dined, Mr. Mell and 
I, at the upper end of a long bare dining-room, full of deal 
tables, and smelling of fat. Then, we had more tasks until 
tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue teacup, and I out of 
atin pot. All day long, and until seven or eight in the even- 
ing, Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the schoolroom, 
worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writing-paper, 
making out the bills (as I found) for last half-year. When 
he had put up his things for the night he took out his flute, 
and blew at it, until I almost thought he would gradually 
blow his whole being into the large hole at the top, and ooze 
away at the keys. 

I picture my small self in the dimly lighted rooms, sitting 
with my head upon my hand, listening to the doleful per- 
formance of Mr. Mell, and conning to-morrow’s lessons. I 
picture myself with my books shut up, still listening to the 
doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and listening through it to 
what used to be at home, and to the blowing of the wind on 
Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and solitary. I pict- 
ure myself going up to bed, among the unused rooms, and 


100 Works of Charles Dickens 


sitting on my bedside crying for a comfortable word from 
Peggotty. I picture myself coming downstairs in the morn- 
ing, and looking, through a long ghastly gash of a staircase 
window, at the school-bell hanging on the top of an out- 
house, with a weathercock above it; and dreading the time 
when it shall ring J. Steerforth and the rest to work—which 
is only second, in ny foreboding apprehensions, to the time | 
when the man with the wooden leg shall unlock the rusty 
gate to give admission to the awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot 
think I] was a very dangerous character in any of these 
aspects, but in all of them I carried the same warning on 
my back. 

Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh 
tome. I suppose we were company to each other, without 
talking. I forgot to mention that he would talk to himself 
sometimes, and grin, and clinch his fist, and grind his teeth, 
and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner. But he had 
these peculiarities—and at first they frightened me, though 
I soon got used to them. 


CHAPTER SIX 
I ENLARGE MY CIRCLE OF ACQUAINTANCE 


I HAD led this life about a month, when the man with the 
wooden leg began to stump about with a mop and a bucket 
of water, from which I inferred that preparations were mak- 
ing to receive Mr. Creakle and the boys. Iwas not mistaken; 
for the mop came into the schoolroom before long, and turned 
out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got on 
how we could, for some days, during which we were always 
in the way of two or three young women, who had rarely 
shown themselves before, and were so continually in the 
midst of dust that I sneezed almost as much as if Salem 
House had been a great snuff-box. 

One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle 


David Gopperfield 101 


would be home that evening. In the evening, after tea, I 
heard that he was come. Before bed-time I was fetched by 
the man with the wooden leg to appear before him. 

Mr. Creakle’s part of the house was a good deal more 
comfortable than ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that 
looked pleasant after the dusty playground, which was such - 
a desert in miniature that I thought no one but a camel, or 
a dromedary, could have felt at home in it. It seemed to me 
a bold thing even to take notice that the passage looked com- 
fortable, as I went on my way, trembling, to Mr. Creakle’s 
presence—which so abashed me, when I was ushered into it, 
that I hardly saw Mrs. Creakle or Miss Creakle (who were 
both there in the parlor), or anything but Mr. Creakle, a 
stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chains and seals, in 
an armchair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him. 

““So!”’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘‘This is the young gentleman 
whose teeth are to be filed! Turn him round.’’ 

The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit 
the placard; and having afforded time for a full survey of 
it, turned me about again, with my face to Mr. Creakle, and 
posted himself at Mr. Creakle’s side. Mr. Creakle’s face 
was fiery, and his eyes were small and deep in his head; he 
_ had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large 
chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some 
thin wet-looking hair that was just turning gray, brushed 
across each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on his 
forehead. But the circumstance about him which impressed 
me most was, that he had no voice, but spoke in a whisper. 
The exertion this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in 
that feeble way, made his angry face so much more angry, 
and his thick veins so much thicker, when he spoke, that 
I am not surprised, on looking back, at this peculiarity 
striking me as his chief one. 

‘‘Now,”’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘‘What’s the report of this 
boy ?’’ 

‘‘There’s nothing against him yet,’’ returned the man 
with the wooden leg. ‘‘There has been no opportunity.” 


102 Works of Charles Dickens 


I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought Mrs. 
and Miss Creakle (at whom I now glanced for the first time, 
and who were both thin and quiet) were not disappointed. 

‘‘Come here, sir!’’ said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me. 

‘‘Come here!’ said the man with the wooden leg, repeat- 
ing the gesture. 

‘‘] have the happiness of knowing your father-in-law,”’ 
whispered Mr. Creakle, taking me by the ear; ‘‘and a worthy 
man he is, and a man of a strong character. He knows me, 


i egiateig E e a 
at Hien o tin Ta ED = © G4 





‘i 





**HE KNOWS ME, AND I KNOW HIM. DO YOU KNOW ME? HEY?” SAID MR. CREAKLE 


and 1 know him. Do you know me? Hey?’ said Mr. 
Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness. 

‘*Not yet, sir,’’ I said, flinching with the pain. 

‘‘Not yet? Hey?’’ repeated Mr. Creakle. ‘‘But you will 
soon. Hey?’’ 

“You will soon. Hey?’’ repeated the man with the 
wooden leg. I afterward found that he generally acted, 
with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle’s interpreter to the 
boys. 


David Gopperfield 103 


1 was very much frightened, and said 1 hoped so, if he 
pleased. 1 felt all this while as if my ear were blazing; he 
pinched it so hard. 

**T’ll tell you what I am,’’ whispered Mr. Creakle, letting 
it go at last, with a screw at parting that brought the water 
into my eyes. ‘‘I’m a Tartar.”’ 

‘‘A Tartar,’’ said the man with the wooden leg. 

‘When I say I'll do a thing, I do it,’”’ said Mr. Creakle; 
‘fand when I say I will have a thing done, I will have it 
done.’’ 

‘*——Will have a thing done, I will have it done,’’ repeated 
the man with the wooden leg. 

“‘T am a determined character,’’ said Mr. Creakle. 
“‘That’s what I am. I do my duty. That’s what J do. 
My flesh and blood’’—he looked at Mrs. Creakle as he said 
this—‘‘when it rises against me, is not my flesh and blood. 
I discard it. Has that fellow,’’ to the man with the wooden 
leg, ‘‘been here again?’’ 

‘*No,’’ was the answer. 

““No,’’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘‘He knows better. He knows 
me. Let him keep away. I say let him keep away,’’ said 
Mr. Creakle, striking his hand upon the table, and looking 
at Mrs. Creakle, ‘‘for he knows me. Now you have begun 
to know me, too, my young friend, and you may go. Take 
him away.”’ 

I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and Miss 
Creakle were both wiping their eyes, and I felt as uncom- 
fortable for them as I did for myself. But I had a petition 
on my mind which concerned me so nearly that I couldn’t 
help saying, though I wondered at my own courage: 

‘*Tf you please, sir—”’ 

Mr. Creakle whispered, ‘‘Hah? What’s this?’’ and bent 
his eyes upon me, as if he would have burned me up with 
them. . 

“*Tf you please, sir,’’ 1 faltered, ‘‘if I might be allowed (I 
am very sorry, indeed, sir, for what I did) to take this writ- 
ing off, before the boys come back—”’ 


104 Works of Charles Dickens 


Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether he only 
did it to frighten me, I don’t know, but he made a burst out 
of his chair, before which I precipitately retreated, without 
waiting for the escort of the man with the wooden leg, and 
never once stopped until I reached my own bedroom, where, 
finding I was not pursued, 1 went to bed, as it was time, and 
lay quaking for a couple of hours. 

Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp was the 
first master and superior to Mr. Mell. Mr. Mell took his meals 
with the boys, but Mr. Sharp dined and supped at Mr. Creakle’s 
table. He was alimp, delicate-looking gentleman, I thought, 
with a good deal of nose, and a way of carrying his head on 
one side as if it were a little too heavy for him. His hair was 
very smooth and wavy; but I was informed by the very first 
boy who came back that it was a wig (a second-hand one, he 
said) and that Mr. Sharp went out every Saturday afternoon 
to get it curled. 

It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave me this 
piece of intelligence. He was the first boy who returned. 
He introduced himself by informing me that I should find 
his name on the right-hand corner of the gate, over the top 
bolt; upon that I said: ‘‘Traddles?’’ to which he replied, 
“The same,’’? and then he asked me for a full account of 
myself and family. 

It was a happy circumstance for me that Traddles came 
back first. He enjoyed my placard so much that he saved 
me from the embarrassment of either disclosure or conceal- 
ment, by presenting me to every other boy who came back, 
great or small, immediately on his arrival, in this form of 
introduction: ‘‘Look here! Here’s a game!’’ Happily, too, 
the greater part of the boys came back low-spirited, and were 
not so boisterous at my expense as I had expected. Some of 
them certainly did dance about me like wild Indians, and the 
greater part could not resist the temptation of pretending that 
I was a dog, and patting and smoothing me lest I should bite, 
and saying, ‘‘Lie down, sir!’ and calling me Towzer. This 
was naturally confusing, among so many strangers, and cost 


David Copperfield 105 


-me some tears, but on the whole it was much better than 1 
had anticipated. 

I was not considered as being formally received into the 
school, however, until J. Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, 
who was reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good- 
looking, and at least half a dozen years my senior, 1 was car- 
ried as before a magistrate. He inquired, under a shed in 
the playground, into the particulars of my punishment, and 
was pleased to express his opinion that it was a ‘‘jolly 
shame’’; for which I became bound to him ever after- 
ward. 

‘‘What money have you got, Copperfield?’’ he said, walk- 
ing aside with me when he had disposed of my affair in these 
terms. 

I told him seven shillings. 

‘*You had better give it to me to take care of,’’ he said. 
**At least, you can, if you like. You needn’t if you don’t 
like.”’ 

I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and 
opening Peggotty’s purse, turned it upside down into his 
hand. 

‘‘Do you want to spend anything now?’’ he asked me. 

‘‘No, thank you,’’ I replied. 

‘You can, if you like, you know,” said Steerforth. ‘‘Say 
the word.”’ 

‘‘No, thank you, sir,’’ I repeated. 

‘*Perhaps you’d like to spend a couple of shillings, or so, 
in a bottle of currant wine by-and-by, up in the bedroom?”’ 
said Steerforth. ‘‘You belong to my bedroom, I find.”’ 

It certainly had not occurred to me before, but 1 said, Yes, 
I should like that. ) 

‘‘Very good,”’ said Steerforth. ‘‘You’ll be glad to spend 
another shilling or so, in almond cakes, | dare say?’’ 

1 said, Yes, I should like that, too. 

‘And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in 
fruit, eh?’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘I say, young Copperfield, 
you’re going it!’’ 


106 Works of Charles Dickens. 


I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in 
my mind, too. 

‘¢Well!’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘We must make it stretch as 
far as we can; that’s all. Dll do the best in my power for 
you. I can go out when I like, and I’ll smuggle the prog 
in.’? With these words he put the money in his pocket, and 
kindly told me not to make myself uneasy; he would take 
care it should be all right. 

He was as good as his word, if that were all right, which 
I had a secret misgiving was nearly all wrong—for I feared 
it was a waste of my mother’s two half-crowns—though I 
had preserved the piece of paper they were wrappped in; 
which was a precious saving. When we went upstairs to 
bed, he produced the whole seven shillings’ worth, and laid 
it out on my bed in the moonlight, saying: 

‘‘There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread 
you’ve got!”’ 

I couldn’t think of doing the honors of the feast, at my 
time of life, while he was by; my hand shook at the very 
thought of it. 1 begged him to do me the favor of presiding; 
and my request being seconded by the other boys who were 
in that room, he acceded to it, and sat upon my pillow, hand- 
ing round the viands—with perfect fairness, I must say—and 
dispensing the currant wine in a little glass without a foot, 
which was his own property. As to me, I sat on his left 
hand, and the rest were grouped about us, on the nearest 
beds and on the floor. 

How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers— 
or their talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather 
to say—the moonlight falling a little way into: the room, 
through the window, painting a pale window on the floor, 
and the greater part of us in shadow, except when Steerforth 
dipped a match into a phosphorus-box, when he wanted to 
look for anything on the board, and shed a blue glare over 
us that was gone directly! A certain mysterious feeling, 
consequent on the darkness, the secrecy of the revel, and the 
whisper in which everything was said, steals over me again, 


David @opperfield 107 


and I listen to all they tell me, with a vague feeling of 
solemnity and awe, which makes me glad they are all so 
near, and frightens me (though 1 feign to laugh) when 
Traddles pretends to see a ghost in the corner. 

1 heard all kinds of things about the school and all be- 
longing to it. 1 heard that Mr. Creakle had not preferred 
his claim to being a Tartar without reason; that he was the 
sternest and most severe of masters; that he laid about him 
right and left, every day of his life, charging in among the 
boys like a trooper, and slashing away unmercifully. That 
he knew nothing himself but the art of slashing, being more 
ignorant (J. Steerforth said) than the lowest boy in the 
school; that he had been, a good many years ago, a small 
hop-dealer in the Borough, and had taken to the schooling 
business after being bankrupt in hops, and making away 
with Mrs. Creakle’s money. With a good deal more of that 
sort, which I wondered how they knew. 

I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose name 
was Tungay, was an obstinate barbarian who had formerly 
assisted in the hop business, but had come into the scholastic 
line with Mr. Creakle, in consequence, as was supposed among 
the boys, of his having broken his leg in Mr. Creakle’s ser- 
vice, and having done a deal of dishonest work for him, and 
knowing his secrets. I heard that, with the single exception 
of Mr. Creakie, Tungay considered the whole establishment, 
masters and boys, as his natural enemies, and that the only 
delight of his life was to be sourand malicious. I heard that 
Mr. Creakle had a son, who had not been Tungay’s friend, and 
who, assisting in the school, had once held some remonstrance 
with his father on an occasion when its discipline was very 
cruelly exercised, and was supposed, besides, to have pro- 
tested against his father’s usage of his mother. I heard that 
Mr. Creakle had turned him out of doors, in consequence; 
and that Mrs. and Miss Creakle had been in a sad way ever 
since. } 

But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, 
there being one boy in the school on whom he never ventured 


108 Works of Charles Diekens 


to lay a hand, and that boy being J. Steerforth. Steerforth 
himself confirmed this when it was stated, and said that he 
should like to begin to see him do it. On being asked by a 
mild boy (not me) how he would proceed if he did begin to 
see him do it, he dipped a match into his phosphorus-box on 
purpose to shed a glare over his reply, and said he would 
commence with knocking him down with a blow on the fore- 
head from the seven-and six-penny inkbottle that was always 
on the mantel-piece. We sat in the dark for some time, 
breathless. 

I heard that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both supposed 
to be wretchedly paid; and that when there was hot and cold 
meat for dinner at Mr. Creakle’s table, Mr. Sharp was always 
expected to say he preferred cold; which was again corrobo- 
rated by J. Steerforth, the only parlor-boarder. I heard that 
Mr. Sharp’s wig didn’t fit him, and that he needn’t be so 
‘*bounceable’’—somebody else said ‘‘bumptious’’—about it, 
because his own red hair was very plainly to be seen 
behind. 

I heard that one boy, who was a coal-merchant’s son, 
came as a set-off against the coal-bill, and was called on that 
account ‘‘Exchange or Barter’’—a name selected from the 
arithmetic-book as expressing this arrangement. I heard 
that the table-beer was a robbery of parents, and the pud- 
ding an imposition. I heard that Miss Creakle was regarded 
by the school in general as being in love with Steerforth; 
and I am sure, as I sat in the dark, thinking of his nice 
voice, and his fine face, and his easy manner, and his curling 
hair, I thought it very likely. Iheard that Mr. Mell was not 
a bad sort of fellow, but hadn’t a sixpencc to bless himself 
with; and that there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his 
mother, was as poorasJob. I thought of my breakfast then, 
and what had sounded like ‘‘my Charley!’ but I was, I am 
glad to remember, as mute as a mouse about it. 

The hearing of all this, and a good deal more, outlasted 
the banquet some time. The greater part of the guests had 
gone to bed as soon as the eating and drinking were over; 


David Copperfield 109 


and we, who had remained whispering and listening half 
undressed, at last betook ourselves to bed, too. 

‘‘Good night, young Copperfield,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘T’ll 
take care of you.’’ 

‘“You’re very kind,’’ 1 gratefully returned. ‘“‘I am very 
much obliged to you.”’ 

‘“You haven’t got a sister, have you?’’ said Steerforth, 
yawning. 

‘*No,’’ I answered. 

‘“‘That’s a pity,’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘If you had had one, 
I should think she would have been a pretty, timid, little, 
bright-eyed sort of girl. I should have lked to know her.’’ 

“‘Good-night, sir,’’ I replied. 

I thought of him very much after 1 went to bed, and 
raised myself, I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the 
moonlight, with his handsome face turned up, and his head 
reclining easily on his arm. He was a person of great power 
in my eyes; that was of course the reason of my mind run- 
ning on him. No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in 
the moonbeams. ‘There was no shadowy picture of his foot- 

steps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in all night. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 
MY “FIRST HALF” AT SALEM HOUSE 


SCHOOL began in earnest next day. A profound impres- 
sion was made upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices 
in the schoolroom suddenly becoming hushed as death when 
Mr. Creakle entered after breakfast, and stood in the door- 
way looking round upon us like a giant in a story-book sur- 
veying his captives. 

Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle’s elbow. He had no occa- 
sion, 1 thought, to cry out ‘‘Silence!’’ so ferociously, for the 
boys were all struck speechless and motionless. 


110 Works of Charles Diekens 


Mr. Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was heard, 
to this effect. 

“Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you’re 
about, in this new half. Come fresh up to the lessons, I 
advise you, for I come fresh up to the punishment. I won’t 
flinch. It will be of no use your rubbing yourselves; you 
won’t rub the marks out that I shall give you. Now get 
to work, every boy!”’ - 

When this dreadful exordium was over, and Tungay had 
stumped out again, Mr. Creakle came to where I sat, and 
told me that if 1 were famous for biting, he was famous for 
biting, too. He then showed me the cane, and asked me 
what I thought of that, for a tooth! Was it a sharp tooth, 
hey? Was it a double tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, 
hey? Did it bite, hey? Didit bite? At every question he 
gave me a fleshy cut with it that made me writhe; so I was 
very soon made free of Salem House (as Steerforth said), 
and very soon in tears also. 

Not that I mean to say these were special marks of dis- 
tinction which only I received. On the contrary, a large 
majority of the boys (especially the smaller ones) were visited 
with similar instances of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the 
round of the schoolroom. Half the establishment was writh- 
ing and crying, before the day’s work began; and how much 
of it had writhed and cried before the day’s work was over, 
I am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exag- 
gerate. 

I should think there never can have been a man who en- 
joyed his profession more than Mr. Creakle did. He had a 
delight in cutting at the boys which was like the satisfaction 
of a craving appetite. I am confident that he couldn’t resist 
a chubby boy, especially; that there was a fascination in such | 
a subject which made him restless in his mind until he had 
scored and marked him for the day. 1 was chubby myself, 
and ought to know. Iam sure, when I think of the fellow 
now, my blood rises against him with the disinterested indig- 
nation I should feel if I could have known all about him with. 


* David @opperfield 111 


out having ever been in his power; but it rises hotly, because 
I know him to have been an incapable brute, who had no 
more right to be possessed of the great trust he held than 
to be Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief; in either 
of which capacities it is probable that he would have done 
infinitely less mischief. 

Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how 
abject we were to him! what a launch in life I think it now, 
on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such 
parts and pretensions! 

Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye—humbly 
watching his eye, as he rules a ciphering-book for another 
victim whose hands have just been flattened by that identical 
ruler, and who is trying to wipe the sting out with a pocket- 
handkerchief. 1 have plenty to do. -I don’t watch his eye 
in idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a 
dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it 
will be my turn to suffer, or somebody else’s, A lane of 
small boys beyond me, with the same interest in his eye, 
watch it, too. I think he knows it, though he pretends he 
don’t. He makes dreadful mouths as he rules the cipher- 
ing-book; and now he throws his eye sidewise down our | 
lane, and we all droop over our books and tremble. A mo- 
ment afterward we are again eying him. An unhappy cul- 
prit, found guilty of imperfect exercise, approaches at his 
command. The culprit falters excuses, and professes a de- 
termination to do better to-morrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke 
before he beats him, and we laugh at it—miserable little 
dogs, we laugh, with our visages as white as ashes, and our 
hearts sinking into our boots. 

Here 1 sit at the desk again, on a drowsy summer after- 
noon. A buzz and hum go up around me, as if the boys 
were so many blue-bottles. A cloggy sensation of the luke- 
warm fat of meat is upon me (we dined an hour or two ago), 
and my head is as heavy as so much lead. 1 would give the 
world to go to sleep. I sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, 
blinking at him like a young owl; when sleep overpowers 


112 Works of Charles Dickens 


me for a minute, he still looms through my slumber, ruling 
those ciphering-books; until he softly comes behind me and 
wakes me to a plainer perception of him, with a red ridge 
across my back. 

Here I am in the playground, with my eye still fascinated 
by him, though 1 can’t see him. The window at a little dis- 
tance, from which I know he is having his dinner, stands for 
him, and I eye that instead. If he shows his face near it, 
mine assumes an imploring and submissive expression. If 
he looks out through the glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth 
excepted) stops in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes 
contemplative. One day, Traddles (the most unfortunate 
boy in the world) breaks that window accidentally with a 
ball. I shudder at this moment with the tremendous sensa- 
tion of seeing it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded 
on to Mr. Creakle’s sacred head. 

Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his 
arms and legs like German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, 
he was the merriest and most miserable of all the boys. He 
was always being caned—I think he was caned every day 
that half year, except one holiday Monday when he was only 
rulered on both hands—and was always going to write to 
his uncle about it, and never did. After laying his head on 
the desk for a little while, he would cheer up somehow, be- 
gin to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his slate be- 
fore his eyes were dry. I used at first to wonder what com- 
fort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some time 
looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself 
by those symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last for- 
ever. But 1 believe he only did it because they were easy, 
and didn’t want any features. 

He was very honorable, Traddles was; and held it as a 
solemn duty in the boys to stand by one another. He suf- 
fered for this on several occasions; and particularly once, 
when Steerforth laughed in church, and the Beadle thought 
it was Traddles, and took him out. I see him now, going 
away in custody, despised by the congregation. He never 


David C@opperfield 113 


said who was the real offender, though he smarted for it next 
day, and was imprisoned so many hours that he came forth 
with a whole churchyardful of skeletons swarming all over 
his Latin Dictionary. But he had his reward. Steerforth 
said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all 
felt that to be the highest praise. For my part, I could have 
gone through a great deal (though I was much less brave 
than Traddles, and nothing like so old) to have won such a 
recompense, 

To see Steerforth walk to church before us, arm-in-arm 
with Miss Creakle, was one of the great sights of my life. 1 
didn’t think Miss Creakle equal to little Em/’ly in point of 
beauty, and [ didn’t love her (I didn’t dare); but I thought 
her a young lady of extraordinary attractions, and in point 
of gentility not to be surpassed. When Steerforth, in white 
trousers, carried her parasol for her, | felt proud to know 
him; and believed that she could not choose but adore him 
with all her heart. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both nota- 
ble personages in my eyes; but Steerforth was to them what 
the sun was to two stars. 

Steerforth continued his protection of me, and proved a 
very useful friend; since nobody dared to annoy one whom 
he honored with his countenance. He couldn’t—or at all 
events he didn’t—defend me from Mr. Creakle, who was 
very severe with me; but whenever | had been treated worse 
than usual, he always told me that I wanted a little of his 
pluck, and that he wouldn’t have stood it himself; which I 
felt he intended for encouragement, and considered to be 
very kind of him. There was one advantage, and only one 
that I know of, in Mr. Creakle’s severity. He found my 
placard in his way when he came up or down behind the 
form on which I sat, and wanted to make a cut .at mein 
passing; for this reason it was soon taken off, and I saw it 
no more. 

An accidental circumstance cemented the intimacy be- 
tween Steerforth and me, in a manner that inspired me with 
great pride and satisfaction, though it sometimes led to in- 


114 Works of Charles Dickens 


convenience. lt happened on one occasion, when he was do- 
ing me the honor of talking to me in the playground, that 1 
hazarded the observation that something or somebody—I 
forget what now—was like something or somebody in Pere- 
grine Pickle. He said nothing at the time; but when 1 was 
going to bed at night, asked me if I had got that book. 

I told him no, and explained how it was that I had read 
it, and all those other books of which I had made mention. 

‘*And do you recollect them?’’ Steerforth said. 

‘Oh, yes,’’ I replied; ‘‘I had a good memory, and I be- 
lieved I recollected them very well.”’ 

‘Then I tell you what, young Copperfield,’’ said Steer- 
forth, “‘you shall tell ’em to me. I can’t get to sleep very 
early at night, and I generally wake rather early in the 
morning, We’ll go over ’em one after another. We’ll make 
some regular Arabian Nights of it.”’ 

I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, and we 
commenced carrying it into execution that very evening, 
- What ravages I committed on my favorite authors in the 
course of my interpretation of them, I am not in a condition 
to say, and should be very unwilling to know; but I hada 
profound faith in them, and I had, to the best of my belief, 
a simple, earnest manner in narrating what I did narrate; 
and these qualities went a long way. 

The drawback was, that I was often sleepy at night, or 
out of spirits and indisposed to resume the story; and then 
it was rather hard work, and it must be done; for to disap- 
point or displease Steerforth was of course out of the ques- 
tion. In the morning, too, when 1 felt weary, and should 
have enjoyed another hour’s repose very much, it was a tire- 
some thing to be roused, like the Sultana Scheherazede, and 
forced into a long story before the getting-up bell rang; but 
Steerforth was resolute; and as he explained to me, in re- 
turn, my sums and exercises, and anything in my tasks that 
was too hard for me, I was no loser by the transaction. Let 
me do myself justice, however. I was moved by no inter- 
ested or selfish motive, nor was 1 moved by fear of him. I 


Dauid Copperfield 115 


admired and loved him, and his approval was return enough. 
It was so precious to me that I look back on these trifles, 
now, with an aching heart. 

Steerforth was considerate, too; and showed his consid- 
eration in one particular instance, in an unflinching manner 
that was a little tantalizing, I suspect, to poor Traddles and 
the rest. Peggotty’s promised letter—what a comfortable 
letter it was!—arrived before ‘‘the half’? was many weeks 
old; and with it a cake in a perfect nest of oranges, and two 
bottles of cowslip wine. This treasure, as in duty bound, I 
laid at the feet of Steerforth, and begged him to dispense. 

**Now, [ll tell you what, young Copperfield,’’ said he; 
‘‘the wine shall be kept to wet your whistle when you are 
story-telling.”’ | 

I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my modesty, 
not to think of it. But he said he had observed I was some- 
times hoarse—a little roopy was his exact expression—and it 
should be, every drop, devoted to the purpose he had men- 
tioned. Accordingly, it was locked up in his box, and 
drawn off by himself in a vial, and administered to me 
through a piece of quill in the cork, when 1 was supposed to 
be in want of a restorative. Sometimes, to make it a more 
Sovereign specific, he was so kind as to squeeze orange juice 
into it, or to stir it up with ginger, or dissolve a peppermint 
drop in it; and although I cannot assert that the flavor was 
improved by these experiments, or that it was exactly the 
compound one would have chosen for a stomachic, the last 
thing at night and the first thing in the morning, I drank it 
gratefully, and was very sensible of his attention. 

We seem to me to have been months over Peregrine, and 
months more over the other stories. The institution never 
flagged for want of a story, I am certain; and the wine 
lasted out almost as well as the matter. Poor Traddles—l 
never think of that boy but with a strange disposition to 
laugh, and with’ tears in my eyes—was a sort of chorus, in 
general; and affected to be convulsed with mirth at the 
comic parts, and to be overcome with fear when there was 


116 Works of Charles Dickens 


any passage of an alarming character in the narrative. This 
rather put me out, very often. It was a great jest of his, I 
recollect, to pretend that he couldn’t keep his teeth from 
chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazil in 
connection with the adventures of Gil Blas; and 1 remember 
when Gil Blas met the captain of the robbers in Madrid, 
this unlucky joker counterfeited such an ague of terror that 
he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who was prowling about 
the passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly conduct 
in the bedroom. 

Whatever I had within me that was romantic and 
dreamy, was encouraged by so much story-telling in the 
dark; and in that respect the pursuit may not have been 
very profitable to me. But the being cherished as a kind of 
plaything in my room, and the consciousness that this ac- 
ecomplishment of mine was bruited about among the boys, 
and attracted a good deal of notice to me though I was the 
youngest there, stimulated me to exertion. In a school car- 
ried on by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over by a 
dunce or not, there is not likely to be much learned. I be- 
lieve our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set as any 
schoolboys in existence; they were too much troubled and 
knocked about to learn; they could no more do that to ad- 
vantage than any one can do anything to advantage ina 
life of constant misfortune, torment, and worry. But my 
little vanity, and Steerforth’s help, urged me on somehow; 
and without saving me from much, if anything, in the way 
of punishment, made me, for the time I was there, an ex- 
ception to the general body, insomuch that I did steadily pick 
up some crumbs of knowledge. 

In this 1 was much assisted by Mr. Mell, who had a lik- 
ing for me that I am grateful to remember. It always gave 
me pain to observe that Steerforth treated him with sys- 
tematic disparagement, and seldom lost an occasion of 
wounding his feelings, or inducing others to do so. This 
troubled me the more for a long time, because I had soon 
told Steerforth, from whom I could no more keep such a | 


David @opperfield 117 


secret than I could keep a cake or any other tangible posses- 
sion, about the two old women Mr. Mell had taken me to 
see; and I was always afraid that Steerforth would let it 
out, and twit him with it. 

We little thought, any one of us, I daresay, when I ate 
my breakfast that first morning, and went to sleep under the 
shadow of the peacock’s feathers to the sound of the flute, 
what consequences would come of the introduction into those 
alms-houses of my insignificant person. But the visit had 
its unforeseen consequences; and of a serious sort, too, in 
their way. 

One day when Mr. Creakle kept the house from indispo- 
sition, which naturally diffused a lively joy through the 
- school, there was a good deal of noise.in the course of the 
morning’s work. The great relief and satisfaction experi- 
enced by the boys made them difficult to manage; and 
though the dreaded Tungay brought his wooden leg in twice 
or thrice, and took notes of the principal offenders’ names, 
no great impression was made by it, as they were pretty 
sure of getting into trouble to-morrow, do what they would, 
and thought it wise, no doubt, to enjoy themselves to-day. 

It was, properly, a half-holiday; being Saturday. But 
as the noise in the playground would have disturbed Mr. 
Creakle, and the weather was not favorable for going out 
walking, we were ordered into school in the afternoon, and 
set some lighter tasks than usual, which were made for the 
oceasion. lt was the day of the week on which Mr. Sharp 
went out to get his wig curled; so Mr. Mell, who always did 
the drudgery, whatever it was, kept school by himself. 

If I could associate the idea of a bull or a bear with any 
one so mild as Mr. Mell, I should think of him, in connec- 
tion with that afternoon when the uproar was at its height, 
as of one of those animals, baited by a thousand dogs. I 
recall him bending his aching head, supported on his bony 
hand, over the book on his desk, and wretchedly endeavor- 
ing to get on with his tiresome work, amid an uproar that 
might have made the Speaker of the House of Commons 


118 Works of Charles Diekens 


giddy. Boys started in and out of their places, playing at 
puss-in-the-corner with other boys; there were laughing boys, 
singing boys, talking boys, dancing boys, howling boys; 
boys shuffled with their feet, boys whirled about him, grin- 
ning, making faces, mimicking him behind his back and 
before his eyes—mimicking his poverty, his boots, his coat, 
his mother, everything belonging to him that they should 
have had consideration for. 

‘*Silence!’’ cried Mr. Mell, suddenly, rising up, and 
striking his desk with the book. ‘‘What does this mean! 
It’s impossible to bear it. It’s ae How can you 
do it to me, boys?’’ 

lt was my book he struck his desk with; and as I stood. 
beside him, following his eye as it glanced coheed the room, I 
saw the boys all stop, some suddenly surprised, some half- 
afraid, and some sorry perhaps. 

Steerforth’s place was at the bottom of the school, at the 
opposite end of the long room. He was lounging with his 
' back against the wall, and his hands in his pockets, and 
looked at Mr. Mell with his mouth shut up as if he were 
whistling, when Mr. Mell looked at him. 

‘Silence, Mr. Steerforth!’’ said Mr. Mell. 

‘‘Silence yourself,’’ said Steerforth, turning red. ‘‘ Whom 
are you talking to?”’ 

‘Sit down,’’ said Mr. Mell. 

“Sit down yourself,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘and mind your 
business.”’ 

There was a titter, and some applause; but Mr. Mell was 
so white that silence immediately succeeded; and one boy, 
who had darted out behind him to imitate his mother again, 
changed his mind, and pretended to want a pen mended. 

‘Tf you think, Steerforth,’’ said Mr. Mell, “‘that I am 
not acquainted with the power you can establish over any 
mind here’’—he laid his hand, without considering what he 
did (as I supposed), upon my head—‘‘or that 1 have not ob- 
served you, within a few minutes, urging your juniors on to 
every sort of outrage against me, you are mistaken.”’ 


David @opperfield | 119 


‘*‘T don’t give myself the trouble of thinking at all about 
you,’’ said Steerforth, coolly; ‘‘so I’m not mistaken, as it 
happens.”’ 

**And when you make use of your position of favoritism 
here, sir,’? pursued Mr. Mell, with his lp trembling very 
much, ‘‘to insult a gentleman—’’ 

‘*A what?—where is he?’’ said Steerforth. 

Here somebody cried out: ‘‘Shame, J. Steerforth! Too 
bad!’ It was Traddles; whom Mr. Mell instantly discom- 
fited by bidding him hold his tongue. 

‘*To insult one who is not fortunate in life, sir, and who 
never gave you the least offense, and the many reasons for 
not insulting whom you are old enough and wise enough to 
-understand,’’ said Mr. Mell, with his lip trembling more and 
more, ‘‘you commit a mean and base action. You can sit 
down or stand up as you please, sir. Copperfield, go on.”’ 

‘Young Copperfield,’’ said Steerforth, coming forward 
up the room, ‘‘stop a bit. I tell you what, Mr. Mell, once 
for all. When you take the liberty of calling me mean or 
base, or anything of that sort, you are an impudent beggar. 
You are always a beggar, you know; but when you do that, 
you are an impudent beggar.”’ 

I am not clear whether he was going to strike Mr. Mell, 
or Mr. Mell was going to strike him, or there was any such . 
intention on either side. I saw a rigidity come upon the 
whole school as if they had been turned into stone, and found 
Mr. Creakle in the midst of us, with Tungay at his side, and 
Mrs. and Miss Creakle looking in at the door as if they were 
frightened. Mr. Mell, with his elbows on his desk and his 
face in his hands, sat for some moments quite still. 

‘“Mr. Mell,’’ said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by the arm; 
and his whisper was so audible now that Tungay felt it un- 
necessary to repeat his words; ‘‘you have not forgotten your- 
self, 1 hope?”’ 

‘“No, sir, no,’’ returned the master, showing his face, and 
shaking his head and rubbing his hands in great agitation. 

‘‘No, sir. No. I have remembered myself, I—no, Mr. 


120 ‘Works of Charles Diekens 


Creakle, I have not forgotten myself, I—I have remembered 
myself, sir. I—I—could wish you had remembered me a 
little sooner, Mr. Creakle. It—it—would have been more 
kind, sir, more just, sir. lt would have saved me some- 
thing, sir.”’ 

Mr. Creakle, looking hard at Mr. Mell, put his hand on 
Tungay’s shoulder, and got his feet upon the form close by, 
and sat upon the desk. After still looking hard at Mr. Mell 
from this throne, as he shook his head, and rubbed his hands, 
and remained in the same state of agitation, Mr. Creakle 
turned to Steerforth, and said: 

‘“Now, sir, as he don’t condescend to tell me, what 7s 
this?”’ 

Steerforth evaded the question for a little while; looking 
in scorn and anger on his opponent, and remaining silent. I 
could not help thinking, even in that interval, I remember, 
what a noble fellow he was in appearance, and how homely 
and plain Mr. Mell looked opposed to him. 

‘“What did he mean by talking about favorites, then?’’ 
said Steerforth, at length. 

‘*Havorites?’’ repeated Mr. Creakle, with his veins in his 
forehead swelling quickly. ‘‘Who talked about favorites?”’ 

“*He did,’’ said Steerforth. 

‘*And pray, what did you mean by that, sir?’’ demanded 
Mr. Creakle, turning angrily on his assistant. 

‘‘T meant, Mr. Creakle,’’ he returned, in a low voice, ‘‘as 
I said; that no pupil had a right to avail himself of his posi- 
tion of favoritism to degrade me.’’ 

‘*To degrade you?”’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘‘My stars! But — 
give me leave to ask you, Mr. What’s-your-name;”’ and 
here Mr. Creakle folded his arms, cane and all, upon his 
chest, and made such a knot of his brows that his little eyes 
were hardly visible below them; ‘‘whether, when you talked 
about favorites, you showed proper respect tome? To me, 
sir,’’? said Mr. Creakle, darting his head at him suddenly, 
and drawing it back again, ‘‘the principal of this establish- 
ment and your employer.’’ 


David @opperfield 121 


‘It was not judicious, sir, 1 am willing to admit,’’ said 
Mr. Mell. ‘‘1 should not have done so, if I had been cool.’’ 

Here Steerforth struck in. 

‘*Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was base, 
and then | called him a beggar. If J had been cool, perhaps 
I shouldn’t have called him a beggar. But 1 did, and I am 
ready to take the consequences of it.’’ 

Without considering, perhaps, whether there were any 

















‘“ LET HIM DENY IT,’ SAID STEERFORTH 


consequences to be taken, I felt quite in a glow at this gal- 
lant speech. It made an impression on the boys, too, for 
there was a low stir among them, though no one spoke a 
word. 

**] am surprised, Steerforth—although your candor does 
you honor,’’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘‘does you honor, certainly—I 
am surprised, Steerforth, 1 must say, that you should attach 
such an epithet to any person employed and paid in Salem. 
House, sir,”’ 


122 Works of Charles Dickens 


Steerforth gave a short laugh. 

‘““That’s not an answer, sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘‘to my 
remark. I expect more than that from you, Steerforth.”’ 

_ lf Mr. Mell looked homely, in my eyes, before the hand- 
some boy, it would be quite impossible to say how homely 
Mr. Creakle looked. 

‘*Let him deny it,’’ said Steerforth. 

‘*Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth?’’ cried Mr. Creakle. 
‘*Why, where does he go a-begging?”’ 

‘‘Tf he is not a beggar himself, his near relation’s one,”’ 
said Steerforth. ‘‘It’s all the same.’’ 

He glanced at me, and Mr. Mell’s hand gently patted me 
upon the shoulder. I looked up with a flush upon my face 
and remorse in my heart, but Mr. Mell’s eyes were fixed on 
Steerforth. He continued to pat me kindly on the shoulder, 
but he looked at him. 

‘‘Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify myself,’’ 
said Steerforth, ‘‘and to say what | mean—what I have to 
say is, that his mother lives on charity in an alms-house.’’ 

Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted me kindly 
on the shoulder, and said to himself, in a whisper, if 1 heard 
right: ‘‘Yes, I thought so.’’ 

Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant, with a severe frown 
and labored politeness: 

‘‘Now you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. Mell? 
Have the goodness, if you please, to set him right before the 
assembled school.’’ 

‘‘He is right, sir, without correction,’’ returned Mr. Mell, 
in the midst of a dead silence; ‘‘what he has said is true.”’ 

‘“Be so good then as to declare publicly, will you,’’ said 
Mr. Creakle, putting his head on one side, and rolling his 
eyes round the school, ‘‘whether it ever came to my knowledge 
until this moment?”’ 

-“T believe not directly,’’ he returned. 

‘‘Why, you know not,’’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘‘Don’t you, 
man?’”’ ) 

‘‘T apprehend you never supposed my worldly circum- 


David Ropperfield 123 


stances to be very good,’’ replied the assistant. ‘‘You know 
what my position is, and always has been here.”’ 

‘*T apprehend, if you come to that,’’ said Mr. Creakle, 
with his veins swelling again bigger than ever, ‘‘that you’ve 
been in a wrong position altogether, and mistook this for a 
charity school. Mr. Mell, we’ll part, if you please. The 
sooner the better.’’ 

-**There is no time,’’ answered Mr. Mell, rising, ‘‘like the 
present.”’ 

‘Sir, to you!’ said Mr. Creakle. 

‘*T take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and of all of you,”’ 
said Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, and again patting 
me gently on the shoulder. ‘‘James Steerforth, the best 
wish | can leave you is, that you may come to be ashamed 
of what you have done to-day. At present I would prefer 
to see you anything rather than a friend to me, or to any one 
in whom I feel an interest.”’ . 

Once more he laid his hand upon my shoulder; and then, 
taking his flute and a few books from his desk, and leaving 
the key in it for his successor, he went out of the school, 
with his property under his arm. Mr. Creakle then made a 
speech, through Tungay, in which he thanked Steerforth for 
asserting (though perhaps too warmly) the independence and 
respectability of Salem House; and which he wound up by 
shaking hands with Steerforth, while we gave three cheers— 
I did not quite know what for, but I supposed for Steerforth, 
and so joined in them ardently, though I felt miserable. Mr. 
Creakle then caned Tommy Traddles for being discovered in 
tears, instead of cheers, on account of Mr. Mell’s departure; 
and went back to his sofa or his bed, or wherever he had 
come from. 

We were left to ourselves now, and looked very blank, I 
recollect, on one another. For myself, I felt so much self- 
reproach and contrition for my part in what had happened, 
that nothing would have enabled me to keep back my tears 
but the fear that Steerforth, who often looked at me, I saw, 
might think it unfriendly—or, I should rather say, consider- 


124 Works of Charles Dickens 


ing our relative ages, and the feeling with which I 2 
him, undutiful—if 1 showed the emotion which distressed 
me. He was very angry with Traddles, and said he was 
glad he had caught it. 

Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying with 
his head upon the desk, and was relieving himself as usual 
with a burst of skeletons, said he didn’t care. Mr. Mell was 
ill-used. ; 

‘‘Who has ill-used him, you girl?’’ said Steerforth. 

‘“Why, you have,’’ returned Traddles. 

‘‘What have 1 done?’’ said Steerforth. 

‘‘What have you done?’ retorted Traddles. ‘‘Hurt his 
feelings and lost him his, situation.”’ 

‘‘His feelings!’’ repeated Steerforth, disdainfully. ‘‘His 
feelings will soon get better of it, ’1l be bound. His feelings 
are not like yours, Miss Traddles. As to his situation— 
which was a precious one, wasn’t it?—do you suppose I am 
not going to write home and take care that he gets some 
money? Polly?’’ 

We thought this intention very noble in Steerforth, whose 
mother was a widow, and rich, and would do almost any- 
thing, it was said, that he asked her. We were all extremely 
glad to see Traddles so put down, and exalted Steerforth to 
the skies; especially when he told us, as he condescended 
to do, that what he had done had been done expressly for us, 
and for our cause, and that he had conferred a great boon 
upon us by unselfishly doing it. 

But I must say that when I was going on with a story in 
the dark that night, Mr. Mell’s old flute seemed more than 
once to sound mournfully in my ears; and that when at last 
Steerforth was tired, and I lay down in my bed, I fancied it 
playing so sorrowfully somewhere that I was quite wretched. 

I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, 
in an easy amateur way, and without any book (he seemed 
to me to know everything by heart), took some of his classes 
until a new master was found. The new master came from 
a grammar-school, and before he entered on his duties, dined 


David Copperfield 125 


in the parlor one day to be introduced to Steerforth. Steer- 
forth approved of him highly, and told us he was a Brick. 
Without exactly understanding what learned distinction was 
meant by this, I respected him greatiy for it, and had no 
doubt whatever of his superior knowledge, though he never 
took the pains with me—not that J was anybody—that Mr. 
Mell had taken. 

There was only one other event in this half-year, out of 
the daily school life, that made an impression on me which 
still survives. It survives for many reasons. 

One afternoon, when we were all harassed into a state 
of dire confusion, and Mr. Creakle was laying about him 
dreadfully, Tungay came in, and called out in his usual 
strong way, ‘‘ Visitors for Copperfield!’’ 

A few words were interchanged between him and Mr. 
Creakle, as, who the visitors were, and what room they were 
to be shown into, and then I, who had, according to custom, 
stood up on the announcement being made, and felt quite 
faint with astonishment, was told to go by the back stairs 
and get a clean frill on, before 1 repaired to the dining-room. 
These orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and hurry of my 
young spirits as I had never known before; and when I got 
to the parlor-door and the thought came into my head that it 
might be my mother—I had only thought of Mr. or Miss 
Murdstone until then—I drew back my hand from the lock 
and stopped to have a sob before I went in. 

At first I saw nobody; but feeling a pressure against the 
door, I looked round it, and there, to my amazement, were 
Mr. Peggotty and Ham, ducking at me with their hats, and 
squeezing one another against the wall. I could not help 
laughing; but it was much more in the pleasure of seeing 
them than at the appearance they made. We shook hands 
in a very cordial way, and I laughed and laughed, until I 
pulled out my pocket-handkerchief and wiped my eyes. 

Mr. Peggotty (who never shut his mouth once, I remem- 
ber, during the visit), showed great concern when he saw 


me do this, and nudged Ham to say something. 5 


* 


126 Works of Charles Dickens 


> 


‘‘Cheer up, Mas’r Davy bor’!’’ said Ham, ia his simper- 
ing way. ‘‘Why, how you have growed!”’ . 

‘‘Am I grown?’’ I said, drying my eyes. I was not cry- 
ing at anything particular that I know of; but somehow, it 
made me cry to see old friends. | 

‘‘Growed, Mas’r Davy bor’? Ain’t he growed?’’ said 
Ham. 

‘*Ain’t he growed?”’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

They made me laugh again by laughing at each other, 
and then we all three laughed until I was in danger of crying 
again. 

‘‘Do you know how mama is, Mr. Peggotty?’’ I said. 
‘¢And how my dear, dear, old Peggotty is?” 

‘‘Oncommon,’’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘*And little Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge?’’ 

‘*On—common,’’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

There was a silence. Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, took two . 
prodigious lobsters, and an enormous crab, and a large canvas 
bag of shrimps, out of his pockets, and piled them upin Ham/’s 
arms. 

‘“You see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, “‘knowing as you was 
partial to a little relish with your wittles when you was 
along with us, we took the liberty. The old Mawther biled 
’em, she did. Mrs. Gummidge biled ’em. Yes,”’ said Mr. 
Peggotty, slowly, who I thought appeared to stick to the 
subject on account of having no other subject ready, ‘‘Mrs. 
Gummidge, I do assure you, she biled ’em.”’ 

I expressed my thanks, and Mr. Peggotty, after looking 
at Ham, who stood smiling sheepishly over the shell-fish, 
without making any attempt to help him, said: 

‘‘We come, you see, the wind and tide making in our 
favor, in one of our Yarmouth lugs to Gravesen’. My sister 
she wrote to me the name of this here placo, and wrote to me 
as if ever I chanced to come to Gravesen’, I was to come over 
and inquire for Mas’r Davy, and give her dooty, humbly 
wishing him well, and reporting of the fam’ly as they was 
oncommon toe-be-sure. Little Em’ly, you see, she’ll write 


David @opperfield 127 


to my sister when I go back, as I see you, and as you was 
similarly oncommon, and so we make it quite a merry-go- 
rounder.’”’ 

_ I was obliged to consider a little before I understood what 
Mr. Peggotty meant by this figure, expressive of a complete 
circle of intelligence. Ithen thanked him heartily, and said, 
- with a consciousness of reddening, that I supposed little Em’ly 
was altered too, since we used to pick up shells and pebbles 
on the beach? 

**She’s getting to be a woman, that’s wot she’s getting to 
be,”’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘Ask him.”’ 

He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent over 
the bag of shrimps. 

‘“‘Her pretty face!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with his own 
shining like a light. 

‘*Her learning!’’ said Ham. | 

**Her writing!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘ Why, it’s as black 
as jet! And so large it is you might see it anywheres.”’ 

It was perfectly delightful to behold with what enthusiasm 
Mr. Peggotty became inspired when he thought of his little 
favorite. He stands before me again, his bluff hairy face 
irradiating with a joyful love and pride, for which I can find 
no description. His honest eyes fire up, and sparkle, as if 
their depths were stirred by something bright. His broad 
chest heaves with pleasure. His strong loose hands clinch 
themselves in his earnestness; and he emphasizes what he 
says with a right arm that shows, in my pigmy view, like 
a sledge-hammer. 

Ham was quite as earnest as he. I dare say they would 
have said much more about her, if they had not been abashed 
by the unexpected coming in of Steerforth, who, seeing mein a 
corner speaking with two strangers, stopped in a song he was 
singing, and said: ‘‘I didn’t know you were here, young 
Copperfield!’ (for it was not the usual visiting room), and 
crossed by us on his way out. 

I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having HOR 
a friend as Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how 


128 Works of Charles Dickens 


I came to have such a friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called 
to him as he was going away. But I said, modestly—Good 
Heaven, how it all comes back to me this long time after- 
ward !— 

‘‘Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yar- 
mouth boatmen—very kind, good people—who are relations 
of my nurse, and have come from Gravesend to see me.’’ 





“ Don’T GO, STEERFORTH, IF YOU PLEASE. THESE ARE TWO YARMOUTH BOATMEN ” 


‘‘Ay, ay?’’ said Steerforth, returning. ‘‘I am glad to 
see them. How are you both?” 

There was an ease in his manner—a gay and light man- 
ner it was, but not swaggering—which I still believe to have 
borne a kind of enchantment with it. I still believe him, in 
virtue of this carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful voice, 
his handsome face and figure, and, for aught I know, of some 
inborn power of attraction besides (which I think a few 
people possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it 
was a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons 


David @opperfield 129 


could withstand. I could not but see how pleased they were 
with him, and how they seemed to open their hearts to him 
in a moment. 

“You must let them know at home, if you please, Mr. 
Peggotty,’’ I said, ‘‘when that letter is sent, that Mr. Steer-_ 
forth is very kind to me, ane that I don’t know what T should 
ever do here without him.’ 

‘*Nonsense!’’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘‘You mustn’t 
tell them anything of the sort.’’ 

**And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk, or Suf- 
folk, Mr. Peggotty,’’? I said, ‘‘while I am there, you may 
depend upon it I shall bring him to Yarmouth, if he will let 
me, to ses your house. You never saw such a good house, 
Steerforth. It’s made out of a boat.’’ 

‘*Made out of a boat, is it?’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘It’s the 
right sort of a house for such a thorough-built boatman.’’ 

‘*So ’tis, sir, so ’tis, sir,’’ said Ham, grinning. ‘‘You’re 
right, young gen’lm’n. Mas’r Davy, bor’, gen’lm’n’s right. 
A thorough- elt boatman! Hor, hor! Thats what he is, 
too!”’ 

Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his Hope though 
his modesty fortade him to claim a personal compliment so 
-vociferously. 

‘‘Well, sir,’’ he said, bowing and chuckling, and tucking 
in the ends of his neckerchief at his breast, ‘‘I thankee, sir, 
I thankee! I do my endeavors in my line of life, sir.”’ 

“The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,’’ said 
Steerforth. He had got his name already. 

“‘T’ll pound it it’s wot you do yourself, sir,’’ said Mr. 
Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘‘and wot you do well—right 
well! I thankee, sir. I’m obleeged to you, sir, for your 
welcoming manner of me. I’m rough, sir, but I’m ready— 
leastways, I hope I’m ready, you understand. My house 
ain’t much for to see, sir, but it’s hearty at your service, 
if ever you should come along with Mas’r Davy to see it. 
I’m a reg’lar Dodman, I am,”’ said Mr. Peggotty, by which 
he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to 

VoL. II—(5) 


130 Works of Charles Dickens 


go, for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had 
somehow or other come back again; ‘‘but I wish you both 
well, and I wish you happy.”’ 

Ham echoed this sentiment; and we parted with them in 
‘the heartiest manner. I was almost tempted that evening 
to tell Steerforth about pretty little Em’ly; but I was too 
timid of mentioning her name, and too much afraid of his 
laughing at me. I remember that 1 thought a good deal, 
and in an uneasy sort of way, about Mr. Peggotty having 
said that she was getting on to be a woman; but I decided 
that was nonsense. 

We transported the shell-fish, or the ‘‘relish,’’ as Mr. Peg- 
votty had modestly called it, up into our room unobserved, 
and madea great supper thatevening. But Traddles couldn’t 
get happily out of it. He was too unfortunate even to come 
through a supper like anybody else. He was taken ill in the 
night—quite prostrate he was—in consequence of Crab; and 
after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to 
an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said 
was enough to undermine a horse’s constitution, received a 
caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing to 
_ confess. 7 

The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of 
the daily strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning sum- 
mer and the changing season: of the frosty mornings when 
‘we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark 
nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening 
schoolroom, dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the 
morning schoolroom, which was nothing but a great shiver- 
ing machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, 
and boiled mutton with roast mutton: of clods of bread and 
butter, dog’s-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted 
copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, 
suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all. 

I well remember though how the distant idea of the holi- 
days, after seeming for an immense time to be a stationary 
speck, began to come toward us, and- to grow and grow. 


David Gopperfield 131 


How from counting months we came to weeks, and then to 
days; and how I then began to be afraid that I should not 
be sent for, and when I learned from Steerforth that I had 
been sent for and was certainly to go home, had dim forebod- 
ings that I might break my leg first. How the breaking up 
day changed its place fast, at last, from the week after next 
to next week, this week, the day after to-morrow, to-morrow, 
to-day, to-night—when I was inside the Yarmouth mail, and 
going home. 

_I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and 
many an incoherent dream of all these things. But when I 
awoke at intervals, the ground outside the window was not 
the playground of Salem House, and the sound in my ears 
was not the sound of Mr. Creakle giving it to Traddles, but 
the sound of the coachman touching up the horses. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


MY HOLIDAYS, ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON 


WHEN we arrived, before day, at the inn where the mail 
stopped, which was not the inn where my friend the waiter 
lived, I was shown up to a nice little bedroom, with DOLPHIN 
painted on the door. Very cold I was, I know, notwithstand- 
ing the hot tea they had given me before a large fire down- 
stairs; and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin’s bed, 
pull the Dolphin’s blankets round my head, and go to sleep. 

Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning 
at nine o’clock. 1 got-up at eight, a little giddy from the 
shortness of my night’s rest, and was ready for him before 
the appointed time. He received me exactly as if not five 
minutes had elapsed since we were last together, and I had 
only been into the hotel to get change for sixpence, or some- 
thing of that sort. 

As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier 


132 _Works of Charles Diekens 


seated, the lazy horse walked away with us all at his accus- 
tomed pace. 

‘“You look very well, Mr. Barkis,’’ I said, thinking he 
would like to know it. 

Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then 
looked at his cuff as if he expected to find some of the bloom 
upon it; but made no other acknowledgment. of the compli- 
ment. 

‘“‘T gave your message, Mr. Barkis,’’ I said: ‘‘I wrote to 
Peggotty.”’ 

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis. 

Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered dryly. 

‘Wasn't it right,, Mr. Barkis?’’ I asked, after a little 
hesitation. 

‘‘Why, no,’’ said Mr. Barkis. 

‘Not the message?”’ 

‘“The message was right enough, perhaps,’’ said Mr. 
Barkis; ‘‘but it come to an end there.”’ 

Not understanding what he meant, I repeated, inquisi- 
tively: ‘‘Came to an end, Mr. Barkis?’’ 

‘‘Nothing come of it,’’ he explained, looking at me side- 
wise. ‘‘No answer.”’ 

‘‘There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?”’ 
said I, opening my eyes. For this was a new light to me. 

‘‘When a man says he’s willin’,’’ said Mr. Barkis, turn- 
ing his Behe: slowly on me again, “‘it’s as much as to say, 
that man’s a-waitin’ for a answer.”’ 

‘* Well, Mr. Barkis?”’ 

‘*Well,’? said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes hablo to his 
horse’ ears, ‘‘that man’s been awaitin’ for a answer ever 
since.’ 

‘‘Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?” 

‘‘N—no,’’ growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it. ‘‘I 
ain’t got no call to go and tell her so. I never said six words 
to her myself. J ain’t a-goin’ to tell her so.’’ 

‘*Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?’’ said I, doubt- 
fully. 


David Gopperfield 133 


“You might tell her, if you would,” said Mr. Barkis, 
with another slow look at me, ‘‘that Barkis was a-waitin’ 
for a answer. Says you—what name is it?’’ 

‘*Her name?”’ 

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head. 

**Peggotty.”’ 

‘‘Chrisen name? Or nat’ral name?’’ said Mr. Barkis. 

**Oh, it’s not her Christian name! Her Christian name 
is Clara.”’ 

‘Is it, though!’ said Mr. Barkis. 

He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this 
circumstance, and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for 
Some time. 

‘*Well!’? he resumed, at length. ‘‘Says you: ‘Peggotty! 
Barkis is a-waitin’ for a answer.’ Says she, perhaps: ‘An- 
swer to what?’ Says you: ‘To what I told you.’ ‘What is 
that?’ says she. ‘Barkis is willin’,’ says you.”’ 

This extremely artful suggestion Mr. Barkis accompa- 
nied with a nudge of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch 
in my side. After that he slouched over his horse in his 
usual manner; and made no other reference to the subject 
except, half an hour afterward, taking a piece of chalk from 
his pocket, and writing up, inside the tilt of the cart: ‘‘Clara 
Pegyotty’’—apparently as a private memorandum. 

Ah! what a strange feeling it was to be going home when 
it was not home, and to find that every object I looked at 
reminded me of the happy old home, which was like a dream 
I could never dream again! The days when my mother and 
1 and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was 
no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully 
on the road, that I am not sure 1 was glad to be there—not 
sure but that I would rather have remained away, and for- 
gotten it in Steerforth’s company. But there I was—and 
soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees wrung 
their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the 
old rooks’ nests drifted away upon the wind. 

The carrier put my box down at the garden gate, and left 


134 Works of Charles Dickens 


me. I walked along the path toward the house, glancing at 
the windows, and fearing at every step to see Mr. Murdstone 
or Miss Murdstone lowering out of one of them. No face 
appeared, however; and being come to the house, and know- 
ing how to open the door, before dark, without knocking, | 13 
went in with a quiet, timid step. 

God knows how infantine the memory may have been, 
that was awakened within me by the sound of my mother’s 
voice in the old parlor, when I set foot in the hall. She was 
' singing in a low tone. I think I must have lain in her 
arms, and heard her singing so to me when 1 was but a 
baby. The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that 
it filled my heart brimful; like a friend come back from a 
long absence. 

I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which 
my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I 
went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suck- 
ling an infant, whose tiny band she held against her neck. 
Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat sing- 
ing to it. Iwas so far right, that she had no other com- 
panion. 

1 spoke to her, and she started and cried out. But see- 
ing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy; and 
coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon 
the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her 
kosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and 
put its hand up to my lips. 

I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that 
feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for heaven 
than I ever have been since. 

‘‘He is your brother,’’? said my mother, fondling me. 
““Davy, my pretty boy! My poor child!’ Then she kissed 
me more and more, and clasped me round the neck. This 
she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced 
down on the ground beside us, and went mad about us both 
for a quarter of an hour. : : 

It seemed that I had not been expected so soon, the car- 


David Copperfield 135 


rier being much before his usual time. It seemed, too, that 
Mr. and Miss Murdstone had gone out upon a visit in the 
neighborhood and would not return before night. I had 
never hoped for this. I had never thought it possible that 
we three could be together undisturbed once more; and I 
felt, for the time, as if the old days were come back. 

We dined together by the fireside. Peggotty was in at- 
tendance to wait upon us, but my mother wouldn’t let her do 
it, and made her dine with us. I had my own old plate, 
with a brown view of a man-of-war in full sail upon it, 
which Peggotty had hoarded somewhere all the time I had 
been away, and would not have had broken, she said, for a 
hundred pounds. I had my own old mug with David on it, 
and my own old little knife and fork that wouldn’t cut. 

While we were at table, I thought it a favorable occasion 
to tell Peggotty about Mr. Barkis, who, before I had finished 
what I had to tell her, began to laugh, and throw her apron 
over her face. 

‘*Peggotty,’’? said my mother. ‘‘What’s the matter?”’ 

Peggotty only laughed the more, and held her apron tight 
over her face when ry mother tried to pull it away, and sat 
as if her head were in a bag. 

‘‘What are you doing, you stupid creature?’’ said my 
mother, laughing. 

“Oh, drat the man!’’ cried Peggotty. ‘‘He wants to 
marry me.’’ 

‘‘It would be a very good match for you; wouldn’t it?’’ 
said my mother. 

**Oh! I don’t know,”’ said Peggotty. ‘‘Don’t ask me. I 
wouldn’t have him if he was made of Os Nor I wouldn’t 
have anybody.’’ 

‘*Then, why don’t you tell him so, you ridiculous thing?”’ 
said my mother. 

‘Tell him so,’’ retorted Peggotty, looking out of her 
apron. ‘‘He has never said a word to me about it. He 
knows better. If he was to make so bold as say a word to 
me, I should slap his face.”’ 


136 Works of Charles Diekens 


Her own was as red as ever I saw it, or any other face, I 
think; but she only covered it again, for a few moments at a 
time, when she was taken with a violent fit of laughter; 
and after.two or three of those attacks went on with her 
dinner. 

I remarked that my mother, though she smiled when 
Peggotty looked at her, became more serious and thoughtful. 
I had seen at first that she was changed. Her face was very 
pretty still, but it looked careworn and too delicate; and her 
hand was so thin and white that it seemed to me to be almost 
transparent. But the change to which I now refer was su- 
peradded to this—it was in her manner, which became anx- 
ious and fluttered. At last she said, putting out her hand, 
and laying it affectionately on the hand of her old servant: 

‘‘Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?”’ 

‘‘Me, ma’am?”’ returned Peggotty, staring. ‘‘ Lord bless 
you, no!”’ 

‘*Not just yet?’’ said my mother, tenderly. 

‘‘Never!’’ cried Peggotty. | 

My mother took her hand, and said: 

‘‘Don’t leave me, Peggotty. Stay with me. It will 
not be for long, perhaps. What should 1 ever do with- 
out you!”’ 

‘*Me leave you, my precious!’ cried Peggotty. ‘‘Not for 
all the world and his wife. Why, what’s put that in your 
silly little head?’’—for Peggotty had been used of old to talk 
to my mother sometimes like a child. 

But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, 
and Peggotty went running on in her own fashion. 

‘‘Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go 
away from you? [I should like to catch her at it! No, no, 
no,’’ said Peggotty, shaking her head, and folding her arms; 
‘‘not she, my dear. It isn’t that there ain’t some Cats that 
would be well enough pleased if she did, but they shan’t be 
pleased. They shall be aggravated. I1’ll stay with you till 
I am across, cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, 
and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of 


David Copperfield 137 


teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, 
then I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in.’’ 

‘‘And Peggotty,’’ says I, ‘‘I shall be glad to see you, and 
I’ll make you as welcome as a queen.’’ 

‘*Bless your dear heart!’’ cried Peggotty. ‘‘I know you 
will!’’ And she kissed me beforehand, in grateful acknowl- 
edgment of my hospitality. After that, she covered her head 
up with her apron again, and had another laugh about Mr. 
Barkis. After that, she took the baby out of its little cradle 
and nursed it. After that, she cleared the dinner-table; after 
that, came in with another cap on, and her work-box, and 
the yard-measure, and the bit of wax-candle, all just the 
same as ever. We sat round the fire, and talked delightful- 
ly. Itold them what a hard master Mr. Creakle was, and 
they pitied me very much. I told them what a fine fellow 
Steerforth was, and what a patron of mine, and Peggotty 
said she would walk a score of miles to see him. I took the 
little baby in my arms when it was awake, and nursed it 
lovingly. When it was asleep again, 1 crept close to my 
mother’s side, according to my old custom, broken now a 
long time, and sat with my arms embracing her waist, and 
my little red cheek on her shoulder, and once more felt her 
beautiful hair drooping over me—like an angel’s wing as I 
used to think, I recollect—and was very happy, indeed. 

While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures 
in the red-hot coals, 1 almost believed that I had never been 
away; that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and 
would vanish when the fire got low-—and that there was 
nothing real in all that I remembered, save my mother, Peg- 
gotty, and 1. 

Peggotty darned away at a stocking as long as she could 
see, and then sat with it drawn on her left hand like a glove, 
and her needle in her right, ready to take another stitch 
’ whenever there was a blaze. I cannot conceive whose 
stockings they can have been that Peggotty was always 
darning, or where such an unfailing supply of stockings in 
want of darning can have come from. From my earliest 


138 Works of Charles Dickens © 


infancy she seems to have been always employed in that 
class of needle-work, and never | ae any chance in any 
other. 

‘‘T wonder,’’ said Peggotty, who was sometimes seized 
with a fit of wondering on some most unexpected topic, 
‘‘what’s become of Davy’s great-aunt?’’ 

‘‘Lor, Peggotty!’’? observed my mother, rousing herself 
from a reverie, ‘‘what nonsense you talk!”’ | 

‘‘Well, but I really do wonder, .ma’am,’’ said Peggotty. 

‘‘What can have put such a person in your head?’’ in- 
quired my mother. ‘‘Is there nobody else in the world to 
come there?”’ | 

‘‘T don’t know how it is,”’ said Peggotty, ‘‘unless it’s on 
account of being stupid, butt my head never .can pick and 
choose its people. They come and they go, and they don’t 
come and they don’t go, just as they like. I wonder what’s 
become of her?’’ 

‘‘How absurd you are, Peggotty,’’ returned my mother. 
‘‘One would suppose you wanted a second visit from her.”’ 

‘Lord forbid!’ cried Peggotty. 

‘‘Well, then, don’t talk about such uncomfortable things, 
there’s a good soul,’’ said my mother. ‘‘Miss Betsey is shut 
up in her cottage by the sea, no doubt, and will remain 
there. At all events, she is not likely ever to trouble us 
again.”’ 

‘‘No,’’? mused Peggotty. ‘‘No, that ain’t likely at all—I 
wonder, if she was to die, whether she’d leave Davy any- 
thing?’’ | 

‘‘Good gracious me, Peggotty,’’ returned my mother, - 
‘‘what a nonsensical woman you are! when you know that 
she took offense at the poor dear boy’s ever being born at 
all!’ 

‘*T suppose she wouldn’t be inclined to forgive him now,”’ 
hinted Peggotty. 

‘Why should she be inclined to forgive him now?!’ said 
my mother, rather sharply. 

‘*Now that he’s got a brother, I mean,”’ said Peggotty. 


David @opperfield “Bo 


My mother immediately began to cry, and wondered how 
Peggotty dared to say such a thing. 

‘* As if this poor little innocent in its cradle had ever done 
any harm to you or anybody else, you jealous thing!’’ said 
she. ‘‘You had much better go and marry Mr. Barkis, the 
carrier. “ Why don’t you?”’ 

‘*‘T should make Miss Murdstone happy, if I was to,’’ said 
Peggotty. 

‘What a bad disposition you have, Peggotty!’ returned 
my mother. ‘‘You are as jealous of Miss Murdstone as it is 
possible for a ridiculous creature to be. You want to keep 
the keys yourself, and give’ out all the things, I suppose? I 
shouldn’t be surprised if you did. When you know that she 
only does it out of kindness and the best intentions. You 
know she does, Peggotty—you know it well.’’ 

Peggotty muttered something to the effect of ‘‘ Bother the 
best intentions!’’ and something else to the effect that there 
was a little too much of the best intentions going on. 

‘“‘. know what you mean, you cross thing,’’ said my 
mother. ‘‘Il understand you, Peggotty, perfectly. You 
know I do, and I wonder you don’t color up like fire. But 
one point ata time. Miss Murdstone is the point now, Peg- 
gotty, and you shan’t escape from it. Haven’t you heard 
her say, over and over again, that she thinks I am too 
thoughtless and too—-a—a—”’ | 

‘*Pretty,’’ suggested Peggotty. 

*‘Well,’’ returned my mother, half-laughing, ‘‘and if she 
is so silly as to say so, can I be blamed for it?” 

‘*No one says you can,”’ said Peggotty. 

*“No, I should hope not indeed,’’ returned my mother. 
‘‘Haven’t you heard her say, over and over again, that on 
this account she wishes to spare me a great deal of trouble, 
which she thinks I am not suited for, and which 1 really 
don’t know myself that I am suited for; and isn’t she up 
early and late, and going to and fro continually—and doesn’t 
she do all sorts of things, and grope into all sorts of places, 


. coal-holes and pantries, and I don’t know where, that can’t 


140 _ Works of Charles Dickens 


be very agreeable—and do you mean to insinuate that there 
is not a sort of devotion in that?”’ 

‘‘T don’t insinuate at all,’’ said Peggotty. | 

‘“‘You do, Peggotty,’’ returned my mother. ‘‘You never 
do anything else, except your work. You are always in- 
sinuating. You revel in it.. And when you talk of Mr. 
Murdstone’s good intentions—”’ ; 

‘‘T never talked of ’em,’’ said Peggotty. 

‘“‘No, Peggotty,’’ returned my mother; ‘‘but you insinu- 
ated. That’s what I told you just now. ‘That’s the worst 
of you. You well insinuate. I said, at the moment, that I 
understood you, and you see I did. When you talk of Mr. 
Murdstone’s good intentions, and pretend to slight them (for 
I don’t believe you really do, in your heart, Peggotty), you 
must be as well convinced as I am how good they are, and 
how they actuate him in everything. If he seems to have 
been at all stern with a certain person, Peggotty—you un- 
derstand, and so, 1 am sure, does Davy, that I am not allud- 
ing to anybody present—it is solely because he is satisfied 
that it is for a certain person’s benefit. He naturally loves 
a certain person, on my account; and acts solely for a cer- 
tain person’s good. He is better able to judge of it than I 
am; for I very well know that I am a weak, light, girlish 
creature, and that he is a firm, grave, serious man. And he 
takes,’’ said my mother, with the tears, which were engen- 
dered in her affectionate nature, stealing down her face, ‘‘he 
takes great pains with me; and I ought to be very thankful 
to him, and very submissive to him even in my thoughts; 
and when I am not, Peggotty, 1 worry and condemn myself, 
and feel doubtful of my own heart, and don’t know what to 
do.”’ 

Peggotty sat with her chin on the foot of the stocking, 
looking silently at the fire. 

‘‘There, Peggotty,’’ said my mother, changing her tone, 
‘*don’t let us fall out with one another, for I couldn’t bear 
it. You are my true friend, 1 know, if I have any in the 
world. When I call you a ridiculous creature, or a vexa- 


David Copperfield 141 


tious thing, or anything of that sort, Peggotty, I only mean 
that you are my true friend, and always have been, ever 
since the night when Mr. Copperfield first brought me home 
here, and you came out to the gate to meet me.”’ 

Peggotty was not slow to respond, and ratify the treaty 
of friendship by giving me one of her best hugs. I think I 
had some glimpses of the real character of this conversation 
at the time; but I am sure, now, that the good creature 
originated it; and took her part in it, merely that my mo- 
ther might comfort herself with the little contradictory sum- 
mary in which she had indulged. The design was effica- 
cious, for | remember that my mother seemed more at ease 
during the rest of the evening, and that Peggotty observed 
her less. 

When we had had our tea, and the ashes were thrown 
up, and the candles snuffed, I read Peggotty a chapter out 
of the Crocodile Book, in remembrance of old times—she 
took it out of her pocket—I don’t know whether she had 
kept it there ever since—and then we talked about Salem 
House, which brought me round again to Steerforth, who 
was my great subject. We were very happy; and _ that 
evening, as the last of its race, and destined evermore 
to close that volume of my life, will never pass out of 
my memory. 

It was almost ten o’clock before we heard the sound of 
wheels. We all got up then; and my mother said hurriedly 
that, as it was so late, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone approved 
of early hours for young people, perhaps I had better go to 
bed. I kissed her, and went upstairs with my candle direct- 
ly before they came in. It appeared to my childish fancy, 
as I ascended to the bedroom where I had been imprisoned, 
that they brought a cold blast of air into the house which 
blew away the old familiar feeling like a feather. 

I felt uncomfortable about going down to breakfast in the 
morning, as [ had never set eyes on Mr. Murdstone since the 
day when I committed my memorable offense. However, 
as it must be done, I went down, after two or three false 


142 Works of Charles Dickens 


starts half-way, and as many runs back on tiptoe to my own 
room, and presented myself in the parlor. 

He was standing before the fire with his back to it, while 
Miss Murdstone made the tea. He looked at me steadily as 
I entered, but made no sign of recognition whatever. 

I went up to him, after a moment of confusion, and said: 
‘‘] beg your pardon, sir. I am very sorry for what I did, 
and I hope you will forgive me.’’ 

‘‘T arn glad to hear you are sorry, David,’’ he replied. 

The hand he gave me was the hand I had bitten. I could 
not restrain my eye from resting for an instant on a red spot 
upon it; but it was not so red as I turned, when I met that 
sinister expression in his face. 

‘‘How do you do, ma’am?’’ I said to Miss Murdstone. 

‘‘Ah! dear me,’’ sighed Miss Murdstone, giving me the 
tea-caddy scoop instead of her fingers. ‘‘How long are the 
holidays?”’ 7 

‘*A month, ma’am.’’ 

‘‘Counting from when?’’ 

**From to-day, ma’am.”’ 

‘‘Oh!’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘‘Then here’s one day 
off.’’ 

She kept a calendar of the holidays in this way, and 
every morning checked a day off in exactly the same man- 
ner. She did it gloomily until she came to ten, but when 
she got into two figures she became more hopeful, and, as the 
time advanced, even jocular. 

It was on this very day that 1 had the misfortune to 
throw her, though she was not subject to such weakness in 
general, into a state of violent consternation. 1 came into 
the room where she and my mother were sitting—and the 
baby (who was only a few weeks old) being on my mother’s 
lap, 1 took it very carefully in my arms. Suddenly Miss 
Murdstone gave such a scream that I all but dropped it. 

‘‘My dear Jane!’’ cried my mother. 

‘‘Good heavens, Clara, do you see?’’ exclaimed Miss 
Murdstone. 


David Copperfield 143 


**See what, my dear Jane?’’ said my mother; ‘‘where?’’ 

‘*He’s got it!’ cried Miss Murdstone. ‘‘The boy has got 
the baby !”’ 

She was limp with horror; but stiffened herself to make 
a dart at me, and take it out of my arms. Then she turned 
faint; and was so very ill that they were obliged to give her 
cherry brandy. I was solemnly interdicted by her, on her 
recovery, from touching my brother any more on any pre- 
tense whateyer—and my poor mother, who, I could see, 
wished otherwise, meekly confirmed the interdict by saying: 
‘*No doubt you are right, my dear Jane.’’ 

On another occasion, when we three were together, this 
same dear baby—it was truly dear to me, for our mother’s 
sake—was the innocent occasion of Miss Murdstone’s going 
into a passion. My mother, who had been looking at his 
eyes, as it lay upon her lap, said: 

' “Davy! come here!’’ and looked at mine. 

1 saw Miss Murdstone lay her beads down. 

*‘I declare,’’ said my mother, gently, ‘‘they are exactly 
alike. I suppose they are mine. I think they are the color 
of mine. But they are wonderfully alike.”’ 

“What are you talking about, Clara?’’ said Miss Murd- 
stone. | 

*‘My dear Jane,’’ faltered my mother, a little abashed by 
the harsh tone of this ae *‘T find that the baby’s eyes 
and Davy’s are exactly alike.’ 

‘Clara!’ said Miss aves rising angrily, ‘‘vou are 
a positive fool sometimes.’ 

“‘My dear Jane,’’ remonstrated my mother. 

‘* A positive fool,’’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘‘Whoelse could 
ocmpare my brother’s baby with your boy? They are not at 
all alike. They are exactly unlike. They are utterly dis- 
similar in all respects. I hope they will ever remain so. I[ 
will not‘sit here and hear such comparisons made.’’ With 
that she stalked out, and made the door bang after her. 

In short, I was not a favorite with Miss Murdstone. In 
short, I was not a favorite there with anybody, not even with 


144 : Works of Charles Dickens 


myself; for those who did like me could not show it, and 
those who did not showed it so plainly that I had a sensitive 
consciousness of always appearing constrained, boorish, and 
dull. 

I felt that 1 made them as uncomfortable as they made 
me. If I came into the room where they were, and they 
were talking together and my mother seemed cheerful, an 
anxious cloud would steal over her face from the moment of 
my entrance. If Mr. Murdstone were in his best humor, Ll 
checked him. If Miss Murdstone were in her worst, I in- — 
tensified it. 1 had perception enough to know that my mo- 
ther was the victim always; that she was afraid to speak to 
me, or be kind to me, lest she should give them some offense 
by her manner of doing so, and receive a lecture afterward; 
that she was not only ceaselessly afraid of her own offending, 
but of my offending, and uneasily watched their looks if I only 
moved. Therefore I resolved to keep myself as much out of 
their way as I could; and many a wintry hour did I hear the 
church-clock strike, when I was sitting in my cheerless bed- 
room, wrapped in my little greatcoat, poring over a book. 

In the evening, sometimes, I went and sat with Peggotty 
in the kitchen. There I was comfortable, and not afraid of 
being myself. But neither of these resources was approved 
of in the parlor. The tormenting humor which was dominant 
there stopped them both. I was still held to be necessary to 
my poor mother’s training, and, as one of her trials, could 
not be suffered to absent myself. 

‘‘David,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, one day after dinner, when 
1 was going to leave the room, as usual, ‘‘l am sorry to ob- 
serve that you are of a sullen disposition.”’ 

‘*As sulky as a bear!’’ said Miss Murdstone. 

I stood still and hung my head. 

‘‘Now, David,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘‘a sullen, obdurate 
disposition is, of all tempers, the worst.’”’ 

‘¢ And the boy’s is, of all such dispositions that ever I have 
seen,’ remarked his sister, ‘‘the most confirmed and stubborn. 
1 think, my dear Clara, even you must observe it?”’ 


Dauid Copperfield 145 


‘‘T beg your pardon, my dear Jane,’’ said my mother, 
‘“‘but are you quite sure—I am certain you’ll excuse me, my 
dear Jane—that you understand Davy?”’ 

**T should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,’’ re- 
turned Miss Murdstone, ‘‘if I could not understand the boy, 
orany boy. I don’t vis to be profound; Bi I do lay 
claim to common sense.’ 

‘*No doubt, my dear Jane,’’ returned my mother; ‘‘your 
understanding is very vigvrous—”’ 

*‘Oh, dear no! Pray don’t say that, Clara,’’ interposed 
Miss Murdstone, angrily. 

‘*But I am sure it is,’? resumed my mother; ‘‘and every- 
body knows it is. I profit so much by it myself, in many 
ways—at least I ought to—that no one can be more convinced 
of it than myself; and therefore I speak with great diffidence, 
my dear Jane, I assure you.”’ 

‘*We’'ll say I don’t understand the boy, Clara,’’ returned 
Miss Murdstone, arranging the little fetters on her wrists. 
‘We'll agree, if you please, that I don’t understand him at 
all. Heis much too deepforme. But perhaps my brother’s 
penetration may enable him to have some insight into his 
character. And I believe my brother was speaking on the 
subject when we—not very decently—interrupted him.’’ 

**T think, Clara,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, in a low, grave 
voice, ‘‘that there may be better and more dispassionate 
judges of such a question than you.”’ 

‘*Hdward,’’ replied my mother, timidly, ‘‘you are a far 
better judge of all questions than I ay ote to be. Both you 
and Jane are. I only said—’’ 

‘*You only said something weak aha aeeenacieyn af Te 
replied. ‘“‘Try not to do it again, my dear Clara, and keep 
a watch upon yourself.”’ 

My mother’s lips moved, as if she answered ‘‘Yes, my 
dear Edward,’’ but she said nothing aloud. - 

**1 was sorry, David, I remarked,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, 
turning his head and his eyes stiffly toward me, ‘‘to observe 
that you are of a sullen disposition. This is not a character 


146 Works of Charles Dickens 


that 1 can suffer to develop itself beneath my eyes without 
an effort atimprovement. You must endeavor, sir, to change 
it. We must endeavor to change it for you.’’ | 

‘‘T beg your pardon, sir,’’? I faltered. ‘‘I have never 
meant to be sullen since I came back.”’ 

‘Don’t take refuge in a lie, sir!’’ he returned, so fiercely 
that 1 saw my mother involuntarily put out her trembling 
hand as if to interpose between us. ‘‘ You have withdrawn 
yourself in your sullenness to youlij,own room, You have 
kept your own room when you ought to have been here. 
You know, now, once for all, that 1 require you to be here, 
and not there. Further, that I require you to bring obedience 
here. You know me, David, I will have it done.”’ 

Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle. 

‘‘T will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing 
toward myself,’’ he continued, ‘‘and toward Jane Murdstone, 
and toward your mother. I will not have this room shunned 
as if it were infected, at the pleasure of a child. Sit down.”’ 

He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog. 

‘‘One thing more,’’ he said. “‘I observe that you have 
an attachment to low and common company. You are not 
to associate with servants. The kitchen will not improve 
you, in the many respects in which you need improvement. 
Of the woman: who abets you, I say nothing—since you, 
Clara,’ addressing my mother in a lower voice, ‘‘from old 
associations and long-established fancies, have a weakness 
respecting her which is not yet overcome.”’ : 

‘*A most unaccountable delusion it is!’’ cried Miss Murd- 
stone. 

‘‘T only say,’’ he resumed, addressing me, ‘‘that I disap- 
prove of your preferring such company as Mistress Peggotty, 
and that it is to be abandoned. Now, David, you understand 
me, and you know what will be the consequence if you fail 
to obey me to the letter.”’ 

I knew well—better perhaps than he thought, as far as 
my poor mother was concerned—and I obeyed him to the 
letter. I retreated to my own room no more; I took refuge 


David Copperfield 147 


with Peggotty no more; but sat wearily in the parlor day 
after day looking forward to night and bed-time. 

_ What irksome constraint I underwent, sitting in the same 
attitude hours upon hours, afraid to move an arm or a leg 
lest Miss Murdstone should complain (as she did on the least 
pretense) of my restlessness, and afraid to move an eye lest 
it should light on some look of dislike or scrutiny that would 
find, new cause for complaint in mine! What intolerable 
dullness to sit listening to the ticking of the clock, and 
watching Miss Murdstone’s little shiny steel beads as she 
strung them, and wondering whether she would ever be 
married, and if so, to what sort of unhappy man; and 
counting the divisions in the molding on the chimney-piece, 
and wandering away, with my eyes, to the ceiling, among 
the curls and corkscrews in the paper on the wall! 

What walks I took alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad 
winter weather, carrying that parlor, and Mr. and Miss Murd- 
stone in it, everywhere-—a monstrous load that I was obliged 
to bear, a daymare that there was no possibility of breaking 
in, a weight that brooded on my wits and blunted them! 

What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always 
feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that 
mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and 
chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and 
that I! 

What evenings, when the candles came, and I was ex- 
pected to employ myself, but not daring to-read an entertain- 
ing book, pored over some hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise 
on arithmetic; when the tables of weights and measures set 
themselves to tunes, as Rule Britannia, or Away with Melan- 
choly; and wouldn’t stand still to be learned, but would go 
threading my grandmother’s needle through my unfortunate 
head, in at one ear and out at the other! 

What yawns and dozes I lapsed into, in spite of all my 
care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps with; what 
answers | never got, to little observations that I rarely made; 
what a blank space 1 seemed, which everybody overlooked, 


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and yet 1 was in everybody’s way; what a heavy relief it was 
to hear Miss Murdstone hail the first stroke of nine at night, 
and order me to bed! 

Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came 
when Miss Murdstone said: ‘‘Here’s the last day off!’ and 
gave me the closing cup of tea of the vacation. 

I was not sorry to go. I had lapsed into a stupid state; 
but I was recovering a little and looking forward to Steer- 
forth, albeit Mr. Creakle loomed behind him. Again Mr. 
Barkis appeared at the gate, and again Miss Murdstone in 
her warning voice said: ‘‘Clara!’? when my mother bent 
over me to bid me farewell. 

I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry 
then; but not sorry to go away, for the gulf between us was 
there, and the parting was there, every day. And it is not 
so much the embrace she gave me that lives in my mind, 
though it was as fervent as could be, as what followed the 
embrace. 

I was in the carrier’s cart when I heard her calling to me. ~ 
I looked out, and she stood at the garden-gate alone, holding 
her baby up in her arms for me to see. It was cold, still 
weather; and not a hair of her head, or a fold of her dress, 
was stirred, as she looked intently at me, holding up her 
child. 

So I lost her. So I saw her afterward, in my sleep at 
school—a silent presence near my bed—looking at me with 
the same intent face—holding up her baby in her arms. 


CHAPTER NINE 
I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY 


I pass over all that happened at school, until the anniver- 
sary of my birthday came round in March. Except that 
Steerforth was more to be admired than ever, 1 remember 


David Gopperfield 149 


nothing. He was going away at the end of the half-year, 
if not sooner, and was more spirited and independent than 
before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging than before; 
but beyond this I remember nothing. The great remem- 
brance by which that time is marked in my mind seems to 
have swallowed up all lesser recollections, and to exist alone. 

It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap 
of full two months between my return to Salem House and 
the arrival of that birthday. I can only understand that the 
fact was so, because I know it must have been so; otherwise 
I should feel convinced that there was no interval, and that 
the one occasion trod upon the other’s heels. 

How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the 
fog that hung about the place; I see the hoarfrost, ghostly, 
through it; I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; 
I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom, with a 
sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morn- 
ing, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in 
the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers and tap their 
feet upon the fioor. 

It was after breakfast, and we had been summoned in 
from the playground, when Mr. Sharp entered and said: 

‘*David Copperfield is to go into the parlor.’’ 

IT expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at 
the order. Some of the boys about me put in their claim not 
to be forgotten in the distribution of the good things, as I got 
out of my seat with great alacrity. 

‘‘Don’t hurry, David,’’ said Mr. Sharp. ‘‘There’s time 
enough, my boy, don’t hurry.”’ 

1 might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which 
he spoke if I had given it a thought; but I gave it none 
until afterward. I hurried away to the parlor, and there 
I found Mr. Creakle sitting at his breakfast with the cane 
and a newspaper before him, and Mrs. Creakle with an 
opened letter in her hand. But no hamper. 

‘‘David Copperfield,’’ said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to 
a sofa, and sitting down beside me. “I want to speak to 


150 Works of Charles Dickens 


you very particularly. I have something to tell you, my 
child.’’ 

-Mr. Creakle, at whom of course 1 looked, shook his head 
without looking at me, and stopped up sigh with a very 
large piece of buttered toast. 

‘*You are too young to know how the world changes every 
day,’’ said Mrs. Creakle, ‘‘and how the people in it pass 
away. But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when 
Wwe are young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all 
times of our lives.”’ 

I looked at her earnestly. 

‘*When you came away from home at the end of the vaca- 
tion,’’ said Mrs. Creakle, after a pause, ‘‘were they all well?” 
After another pause, ‘‘ Was your mama well?’’ 

I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and sitill 
looked at her earnestly, making no attempt to answer. 

‘‘Because,’’ said she, ‘‘I grieve to tell you that I hear 
this morning your mama is very ill.”’ 

A mist arose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure 
seemed to move in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning 
tears run down my face, and it was steady again. 

‘‘She is very dangerously ill,’’ she added. 

T knew all now. 

**She is dead.’’ 

There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken 
out into a desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world. 

She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and 
left me alone sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to 
sleep, and awoke and cried again. When I could cry no 
more, I began to think; and then the oppression on my 
breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull pain that there was 
no ease for. 

And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity 
that weighed upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I 
thought of our house shut up and hushed. I thought of the 
little baby, who, Mrs. Creakle said, had been pining away for 
some time, and who, they believed, would die, too. I thought 


David Gopperfield 151 


of my father’s grave in the churchyard, by our house, and of 
my mother lying there beneath the tree 1 knew so well. Il 
stood upon a chair when I was left alone, and looked into the 
glass’ to see how red my eyes were, and how sorrowful my 
face was. I considered, after some hours were gone, if my 
tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be, 
what, in connection with my loss, it would affect me most to 
think of when I drew near home—for I was going home to 
the funeral. Jam sensible of having felt that a dignity at- 
tached to me among the rest of the boys, and that I was 
important in my affliction. 

If ever child were stricken with sincere grief I was. But 
IT remember that this importance was a kind of satisfaction 
to me, when I walked in the playground that afternoon while 
the boys were in school. When I saw them glancing at me 
out of the windows, as they went up to their classes, I felt 
distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked 
slower. When school was over, and they came out and 
spoke to me, I felt it rather good in myself not to be proud 
to any of them, and to take exactly the same notice of them 
all as before. 

I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the 
heavy night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was 
principally used by country-people traveling short interme- 
diate distances upon the road. We had no story-telling that 
evening, and Traddles insisted on lending me his pillow. I 
don’t know what good he thought it would do me, for I had 
one of my own; but it was all he had to lend, poor fellow, 
except a sheet of letter-paper full of skeletons, and that he 
gave me at parting, as a soother of my sorrows and a con- 
tribution to my peace of mind. 

I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon, I little 
thought then that I left it never to return. We traveled 
very slowly all night, and did not get into Yarmouth before 
nine or ten o’clock in the morning. 1 looked out for Mr. 
Barkis, but he was not there, and instead of him a fat, short- 
winded, merry-looking, little old man in black, with rusty 


152 Works of Charles Dickens 


little bunches of ribbons at the knees of his breeches, black 
stockings, and a broad-brimmed hat, came puffing up to the 
coach-window, and said: 

‘“Master Copperfield ?”’ 

‘*Yes, sir.” 

‘*Will you come with me, young sir, if you please?’’ he 
said, opening the door, ‘‘and I shall have the pleasure of 
taking you home.”’ 

I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we 
walked away to a shop in a narrow street, on which was 
written, OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR, HHABERDASHER, FUNERAL 
FURNISHER, ETC. It was a close and stifling little shop, full 
of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including one 
window full of beaver hats and bonnets. We went into a 
little back-parlor, behind the shop, where we found three 
young women at work on a quantity of black materials, 
which were heaped upon the table, and little bits and cut- 
tings of which were littered all over the floor. There was 
a good fire in the room, and a breathless smell of warm black 
crape—I did not know what the smell was then, but I know 
now. : 

The three young women, who appeared to. be very indus- 
trious and comfortable, raised their heads to- look at me, and 
then went on with their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At 
the same time there came from a workshop across a little 
yard outside the window a regular sound of hammering that 
kept a kind of tune: RAT—tat-tat, RAT-—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, 
without any variation. 

‘‘Well,’’ said my conductor, to one of the three young 
women. ‘‘How do you get on, Minnie?’’ 

‘‘We shall be ready by the trying-on time,’’ she re- 
plied, gayly, without looking up. ‘‘Don’t you be afraid, 
father.”’ 

Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down 
and panted. He was so fat that he was obliged to pant some 
time before he could say: 

“‘That’s right.’’ 


David Copperfield 153 


‘*Wather,’’ said Minnie, playfully. ‘‘Whata porpoise you 
do grow!”’ 

‘Well, I don’t know how it is, my dear,’’ he replied, con- 
sidering about it. ‘‘I am rather so.’’ 

**You are such a comfortable man, you see,’’ said Minnie. 
‘*You take things so easy.’’ : 

*‘No use taking ’em otherwise, my dear,’’ said Mr. Omer. 











*% FATHER !’’ SAID MINNIE, PLAYFULLY, ‘*‘ WHAT A PORPOISE YOU DO GROW !”’ 


“*No, indeed,’’ returned his daughter. ‘‘ Weare all pretty 
gay here, thank Heaven! Ain’t we, father?’’ 

‘‘T hope so, my dear,’’ said Mr. Omer. ‘‘As I have got 
my breath now, I think I’ll measure this young scholar. 
-Would you walk into the shop, Master Copperfield?’’ 

1 preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and 
after showing me a roll of cloth which he said was extra 
super, and too good mourning for anything short of parents, 
he took my various dimensions, and put them down in a 
book. While he was recording them he called my attention 


154 Works of Charles Diekens 


to his stock in trade, and to certain fashions which he said 
had ‘‘just come up,’’ and to certain other fashions which he 
said had ‘‘just gone out.”’ 

‘¢And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint 
of money,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘‘But fashions are like human 
beings. They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; 
and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how. Every- 
thing is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that point 
of view.”’ 

I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would 
possibly have been beyond me under any circumstances; and 
Mr. Omer took me back into the parlor, breathing with some 
difficulty on the way. 

He then called down a little breakneck range of steps be- 
hind a door: ‘“‘Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!’’ 
which, after some time, during which I sat looking about me 
and thinking, and listening to the stitching in the room and 
the tune that was being hammered across the yard, appeared 
on a tray, and turned out to be for me. 

‘‘T have been acquainted with you,’’ said Mr. Omer, 
after watching me for some minutes, during which I had 
not made much impression on the breakfast, for the black 
things destroyed my appetite, ‘‘I have been acquainted with 
you a long time, my young friend. <4 

*‘Have you, sir?”’ om 

‘All your life,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘‘I may say before it. 
I knew your father before you. He was five foot nine and a 
half, and he lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground.’”’ 

““Rat—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat,’’ across the 
yard. 

‘‘He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in 
a fraction,’’ said Mr. Omer, pleasantly. ‘‘It was either his. 
request or her direction, I forget which.”’ 

‘*Do you know how my little brother is, sir?’’ I inquired. 

Mr. Omer shook his head. 

‘*RaT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat.”’ 

‘**He is in his mother’s arms,’’ said he. 


David Copperfield | 155 


**Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?’’ 
**Don’t mind it more than you can help,’’ said Mr. Omer. 
~**Ves. The baby’s dead.’’ 

My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence. I left 
the scarcely tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head 
on another table in a corner of the little room, which Minnie 
hastily cleared, lest 1 should spot the mourning that was 
lying there with my tears. She was a pretty good-natured 
girl, and put my hair away from my eyes with a soft kind 
touch; but she was very cheerful at having nearly finished 
her work and being in good time, and was so different from 
me. 

Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fel- 
low came across the yard into the room. He had a hammer 
in his hand, and his mouth was full of little nails, which he 
was obliged to take out before he could speak. 

_**Well, Joram!’’ said Mr. Omer. ‘‘How do you get on?”’ 

**All right,’’ said Joram. ‘‘Done, sir.’’ 

Minnie colored a little, and the other two girls smiled at 
one another. 

‘‘What! you were at it by candle-light last night, when I 
was at the club, then? Were you?’’ said Mr. Omer, shut- 
ting up one eye. 

**Yes,’’ said Joram. ‘‘As you said we could make a lit- 
tle trip of it, and go over together, if it was done, Minnie 
and me—and you.’’ 

‘Oh! I thought you were going to leave me out alto- 
gether,’’ said Mr. Omer, laughing till he coughed. 

‘‘_-As you were so good as to say that,’’? resumed the 
young man, ‘‘why I turned to with a will, you see. Will 
you give me your opinion of it?”’ 

“*T will,’’ said Mr. Omer, rising. ‘‘My dear’’—and he 
stopped and turned to me—‘‘would you like to see your—’’ 

‘*No, father,’’ Minnie interposed. . 

“T thought it might be agreeable, my dear,’’ said Mr. 
Omer. ‘‘But perhaps you’re right.’’ — 

I can’t say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother’s 


156 Works of Charles Dickens 


coffin that they went to look at. I had never heard one 
making; I had never seen one that I know of: but it came 
into my mind what the noise was, while it was going on; 
and when the young man entered, I am sure I knew what 
he had been doing. 

The work being now finished, the two girls, ee names 
I had not heard, brushed the shreds and threads from their 
dresses and went into the shop to put that to rights, and wait 
for customers. Minnie stayed behind to fold up what they 
had made, and pack it in two baskets. This she did upon 
her knees, humming a lively little tune the while. Joram, 
who I had no doubt was her lover, came in and stole a kiss 
from her while she was busy (he didn’t appear to mind me, 
at all), and said her father was gone for the chaise, and he 
must make haste and get himself ready. Then he went out 
again; and then she put her thimble and scissors in her 
pocket, and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly 
in the bosom of her gown, and put on her outer clothing 
smartly, at a little glass behind the door, in which I saw the 
reflection of her pleased face. 

All this 1 observed, sitting at the table in the corner with 
my head leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on 
very different things. The chaise soon came round to the 
front of the shop, and the baskets being put in first, I was 
put in next, and those three followed. I remember it as a 
kind of half chaise-cart, half pianoforte van, painted of a 
somber color, and drawn by a black horse with a long tail. 
There was plenty of room for us all. 

I do not think I have ever experienced so strange ; a feeling 
in my life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with 
them, remembering how they had been employed, and see- 
ing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry with them; I was 
more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among creat- 
ures with whom I had no community of nature. They were 
very cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the 
two young people sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to 
them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby face 


David Qopperfield 157 


and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him. 
They would have talked to me, too, but I held back, and 
moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and 
hilarity, though it was far from boisterous, and almost won- 
dering that no judgment came upon them for their hardness 
of heart. 

So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and 
drank and enjoyed themselves, 1 could touch nothing that 
they touched, but kept my fast unbroken. So, when we 
reached home, I dropped out of the chaise behind, as quick- 
ly as possible, that I might not be in their company before 
those solemn windows, looking blindly on me like closed eyes 
once bright. And, oh, how little need I had had to think 
what would move me to tears when I came back—seeing the 
window of my mother’s room, and next it that which, in the 
better time, was mine. 

I was in Peggotty’s arms before I got to the door, and 
she took me into the house. Her grief burst out-when she 
first saw me; but she controlled it Soon, and spoke in whis- 
pers, and walked softly, as if the dead could be disturbed. 
She had not been in bed, I found, for a long time. She sat 
up at night still, and watched. As long as her poor dear 
pretty was above the ground, she said, she would never de- 
sert her. ) 

Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the 
parlor where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silent- 
ly, and pondering in his elbow-chair. Miss Murdstone, who 
was busy at her writing-desk, which was covered with let- 
ters and papers, gave me her cold finger-nails, and asked 
me, in an iron whisper, if I had been measured for my 
mourning. 

I said: ‘‘Yes.”’ 

‘‘And your shirts,’? said Miss Murdstone; ‘‘have you 
brought ’em home?”’ 

‘*Yes, ma’am. I have brought home all my clothes.”’ 

This was all the consolation that her firmness adminis- 
tered tome. I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure 


158 Works of Charles Dickens 


in exhibiting what she called her self-command, and her 
firmness, and her strength of mind, and her common sense, 
and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable quali- 
ties, on such an occasion. She was particularly proud of her 
turn for business; and she showed it now in reducing every- 
thing to pen and ink, and being moved by nothing. All the 
rest of that day, and from morning to night afterward, she 
sat at that desk; scratching composedly with a hard pen, 
speaking in the same imperturbable whisper to everybody; 
never relaxing a muscle of her face, or softening the tone of 
her voice, or appearing with an atom of her dress astray. 

Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that 
I saw. He would open it, and look at it as if he were read- 
ing, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the 
leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room. 
I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and counting 
his footsteps, hour after hour. He very seldom spoke to her, 
and never tome. He seemed to be the only restless thing, 
except the clocks, in the ‘whole motionJess house. 

In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peg- 
gotty, except that, in passing up or down stairs, I always 
found her close to the room where my mother and her baby 
lay, and except that she came to me every night, and sat by 
my bed’s head while I went to sleep. A day or two before 
the burial—I think it was a day or two before, but I am con- 
scious of confusion in my mind about that heavy time, with 
nothing to mark its progress—she took me into the room. I 
only recollect that underneath some white covering on the 
bed, with a beautiful cleanliness and freshness all around it, 
there seemed to me to lie embodied the solemn stillness that 
was in the house; and that when she would have turned the 
cover gently back, I cried: “‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’ and held 
her hand. 

If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it 
better. The very air of the best parlor, when 1 went in at 
the door, the bright condition of the fire, the shining of the 
wine in the decanters, the patterns of the glasses and plates, 


David @opperfield 159 


the faint sweet smell of cake, the odor of Miss Murdstone’s 
dress, and our black clothes. Mr. Chillip is in the room, 
and comes to speak to me. 

‘And how is Master David?’ he says, kindly. 

I cannot tell him very well. 1 give him my hand, which 
he holds in his. 

‘“Dear me!’’ says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with 
something shining in his eye. ‘‘Our little friends grow up 
around us. They grow out of knowledge, ma’am?’’ 7 

This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no reply. 

“There is a great improvement here, ma’am?’’ says Mr. 
Chillip. | 

Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown, and a 
formal bend; Mr. Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, 
keeping me with him, and opens his mouth no more. 

I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, 
not because I care about myself, or have done since I came 
home. And now the bell begins to sound, and Mr. Omer 
and another come to make us ready. As Peggotty was wont 
to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to the same 
grave were made ready in the same room. 

There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbor Mr. Grayper, 
Mr. Chillip, and I. When we go out to the door, the bearers 
and their load are in the garden; and they move before us 
down the path, and past the elms, and through the gate, and 
into the churchyard, where I have so often heard the birds 
sing on a summer morning. | 

We stand around the grave. The day seems different to 
me from every other day, and the light not of the same color 
—of a sadder color. Now there is a solemn hush, which we 
have brought from home with what is resting in the mould; 
and while we stand bare-headed I hear the voice of the 
clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct 
‘and plain, saying: ‘‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, 
saith the Lord!’ Then I heard sobs; and, standing apart 
among the lookers-on, I see that good and faithful servant, 
whom of all the people upon the earth I love the best, and 


160 Works of Charles Dickens 


unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will 
one day say: ‘‘ Well done.”’ 

There are many faces that I know, among the little 
crowd; faces that I knew in church, when mine was always 
wondering there; faces that first saw my mother, when she 
came to the village in her youthful bloom. I do not mind 
them—I mind nothing but my grief—and yet I see and know 
them all; and even in the background far away, see Minnie 
looking on, and her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who is 
near me. 

It is over, the earth is filled in, and we turn to come 
away. Before us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, 
so linked in my mind with the young idea of what is gone, 
that all my sorrow has been nothing to the sorrow it calls 
forth. But they take me on; and Mr. Chillip talks to me: 
and when we get home, puts some water to my lips; and 
when I ask his leave to go up to my room, dismisses me 
with the gentleness of a woman. 

All this, I say, is yesterday’s event. Events of later 
date have floated from me to the shore where all forgotten 
things will reappear, but this stands like a high rock in 
the ocean. 

I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. 
The Sabbath stillness of the time (the day was so like Sun- 
day! I have forgotten that) was suited to us both. She sat 
down by my side upon my little bed; and holding my hand, 
and sometimes putting it to her lips, and sometimes smooth- 
ing it with hers, as she might have comforted my little 
brother, told me, in her way, all that she had to tell concern- 
ing what had happened. 


‘“‘She was never well,’’ said Peggotty, ‘‘for a long time. 
She was uncertain in her mind, and not happy. When her 
baby was born, I thought at first she would get better, but 
she was more delicate, and sunk a little every day. She 
used to like to sit alone before her baby came, and then she 
cried; but afterward she used to sing to it—so soft, that I 


David Copperfield 161 


once thought, when I heard her, it was like a voice up in the 
air that was rising away. 

*‘T think she got to be more timid, and more felonteried: 
like, of late; and that a hard word was like a blow to her. 
But she was always the same to me. She never changed to 
her foolish Peggotty, didn’t my sweet girl.’’ 

Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a 
little while. 

“*The last time that I saw her like her own old self was 
the night when you came home, my dear. The day you 
went away, she said to me: ‘I never shall see my pretty 
darling again. Something tells me so that tells the truth, 1 
know.’ 

**She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when 
they told her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made 
believe to be so; but it was all a bygone then. She never 
told her husband what she had told me—she was afraid of 
saying it to anybody else—till one night, a little more than a 
week before it happened, when she said to him: ‘My dear, I 
think I am dying.’ 

‘* *Tt’s off my mind now, Peggotty,’ she told me when I 
laid her in her bed that night. ‘He will believe it more and 
more, poor fellow, every day for a few days to come; and 
then it will be past. I am very tired. If this is sleep, sit 
by me while I sleep—don’t leave me. God bless both my 
children. God protect and keep my fatherless boy.’ : 

‘**T never left her afterward,’’ said Peggotty. ‘‘She often 
talked to them two downstairs—for she loved them; she 
couldn’t bear not to love any one who was about her—but 
when they went away from her bedside, she always turned 
to me, as if there was rest where Peggotty was, and never 
fell asleep in any other way. 

*‘On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and 
said: ‘If my baby should die, too, Peggotty, please let them 
lay him in my arms, and bury us together.’ (It was done; 
for the poor lamb lived but a day beyond her.) ‘Let my 
dearest boy go with us to our resting-place,’ she said, ‘and 

Vou. II—(6) 


162 Works of Charles Diekens 


tell him that his mother, when she lay here, blessed him, not 
once, but a thousand times.’ ”’ 

Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating 
on my hand. 

‘‘Tt was pretty far in the night,’’ said Peggotty, ‘‘when 
she asked me for some drink; and when she had taken it, 
gave me such a patient smile, the dear!—so beautiful !— 

‘‘Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she 
said to me, how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had 
always been to her, and how he had borne with her, and had 
told her, when she doubted herself, that a loving heart was 
better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a happy 
man in hers. ‘Peggotty, my dear,’ she said then, ‘put me 
nearer to you,’ for she was very weak. ‘Lay your good arm 
underneath my neck,’ she said, ‘and turn me to you, for your 
face is going far off, and I want it to be near.’ I put it as 
she asked; and, oh, Davy! the time had come when my first 
parting words to you were true—when she was glad to lay 
her poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty’s arm—and 
- she died like a child that had gone to sleep.”’ 


Thus ended Peggotty’s narration. From the moment of 
my knowing of the death of my mother, the idea of her as 
she had been of late had vanished from me. 1 remembered 
her, from that instant, only as the young mother of my 
earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright 
curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me at 
twilight in the parlor. What Peggotty had told me now 
was so far from bringing me back to the later period, that 
it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, 
but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her 
calm untroubled youth, and canceled all the rest. 

The mother who lay in the grave was the mother of my 
infancy; the little creature in her arms was myself, as I had 
once been, hushed forever on her bosom. 


David @opperfield 163 


CHAPTER TEN 
I BECOME NEGLECTED AND AM PROVIDED FOR 


THE first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when 
the day of the solemnity was over, and light was freely ad- 
mitted into the house, was to give Peggotty a month’s warn- 
ing. Much as Peggotty would have disliked such a service, 
1 believe she would have retained it for my sake in prefer- 
ence to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, 
and told me why; and we condoled with one another in all 
sincerity. 

As to me or my future not a word was said, or a step 
taken. Happy they would have been, I daresay, if they 
could have dismissed me at a month’s warning, too. 1 mus- 
tered courage once to ask Miss Murdstone when I was going 
back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was 
not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very 
anxious to know what was going to be done with me, and so 
was Peggotty; but neither she nor I could pick up any in- 
formation on the subject. 

There was one change in my condition, which, while it 
relieved me of a great deal of present uneasiness, might have 
made me, if I had been capable of considering it closely, yet 
more uncomfortable about the future. It was this. The 
constraint that had been put upon me was quite abandoned. 
1 was so far from being required to keep my dull post in the 
parlor, that on several occasions when I took my seat there 
Miss Murdstone frowned to me to goaway. I was so far 
from being warned off from Peggotty’s society that, provided 
I was not in Mr. Murdstone’s, I was never sought out or in- 
quired for. At first I was in daily dread of his taking my 
education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone’s devoting 
herself to it; but 1 soon began to think that such fears were 
groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect. 


164 Works of Charles Dickens 


I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain 
then. I was still giddy with the shock of my mother’s 
death, and in a kind of stunned state as to all tributary 
things. I can recollect, indeed, to have speculated, at odd 
times, on the possibility of my not being taught any more, or 
cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody 
man, lounging an idle life away about the village; as well 
as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by go- 
ing away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek my 
fortune—but these were transient visions, day dreams I sat 
looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or 
written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted 
away, left the wall blank again. 

‘“‘Peggotty,’’? 1 said, in a thoughtful whisper one evening 
when I was warming my hands at the kitchen fire, ‘‘Mr. 
Murdstone likes me less than he used to. He never liked me 
much, Peggotty; but he would rather not even see me now, 
if he can help it.”’ 

‘‘Perhaps it’s his sorrow,’’ said Peggotty, stroking my 
hair. , 

‘‘T am sure, Peggotty, 1 am sorry, too. If I believed it 
was his sorrow, I should not think of it at all. But it’s not 
that; oh, no, it’s not that.”’ 

“How do you know it’s not that?”’ Baia Peggotty, after a 
silence. 

‘‘Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. 
He is sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss 
Murdstone; but if u was to go in, Peggotty, he would be 
something besides.’ | 

‘What would he be?’’ said Peggotty. 

‘‘Anegry,’’ I answered, with an involuntary imitation of 
his dark frown. ‘“‘If he was only sorry, he wouldn’t look at 
me as he does. J am only sorry, and it makes me feel 
kinder.”’ 

Peggotty said nothing for a little while, and I warmed my 
hands as silent as she, 

‘*Davy,’’ she said at length. 


David @opperfield 165 


“Yes, Peggotty?”’ 

**| have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of—all the 
ways there are, and all the ways there ain’t, in short—to get 
a suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there’s no such 
a thing, my love.’’ 

**And what do you mean to do, Peggotty?’’ said I, wist- 
‘ fully. ‘‘Do you mean to go and seek your fortune?”’ 

‘1 expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,”’ replied 
Peggotty, ‘‘and live there.”’ 

**You might have gone further off,’’? I said, brightening 
a little, ‘‘and been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, 
my dear old Peggotty, there. You won’t be quite at the other 
end of the world, will you?’’ 

‘*Contrairy-ways, please God!’’ cried Peggotty, with great 
animation. ‘*As long as you are here, my pet, I shall come 
over every week of my life to see you. ‘One day every week 
of my life!’’ 

I felt. a great weight taken off my mind by this promise; 
but even this was not all, for Peggotty went on to say: 

*‘1’m a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother’s first, for 
another fortnight’s visit—just till I have had time to look 
about me, and get to be something like myself again. Now, 
I have been thinking that perhaps, as they don’t want you 
here at present, you might be let to go along with me.”’ 

If anything short of being in a different relation to every 
one about me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a 
sense of pleasure at that time, it would have been this proj- 
ect of all others. The idea of being again surrounded by 
those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of renewing the 
peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells 
were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the 
shadowy ships breaking through the mist; of roaming up 
and down with little Em/’ly, telling her my troubles, and 
finding charms against them in the shells and pebbles on 
the beach; made a calm in my heart. It was ruffled next 
moment, to be sure, by a doubt of Miss Murdstone’s giving 
her consent; but even that was set at rest soon, for she came 


166 Works of Charles Diekens 


out to take an evening grope in the store-closet while we were 
yet in conversation, and Peggotty, with a boldness that 
amazed me, broached the topic on the spot. 

‘*The boy will be idle there,’’ said Miss Murdstone, look- 
ing into a pickle-jar, ‘‘and idleness is the root of all evil. 
But, to be sure, he would be idle here—or anywhere, in my 
opinion.”’ 

Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she 
swallowed it for my sake, and remained silent. 

‘‘Humph!’’ said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on 
the pickles; ‘‘it is of more importance than anything else—it 
is of paramount importance—that my brother should not be 
disturbed or made uncomfortable. I suppose I had better 
say yes.”’ . 

1 thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, 
lest it should induce her to withdraw her assent. Nor could 
I help thinking this a prudent course, when she looked at me 
out of the pickle-jar with as great an access of sourness as 
if her black eyes had absorbed its contents. However, the 
permission was given, and was never retracted; for when the 
month was out Peggotty and I were ready to depart. 

Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty’s boxes. I 
had never known him to pass the garden gate before, but on 
this occasion he came into the house. And he gave mea 
look, as he shouldered the largest box and went out, which 
I thought had meaning in it, if meaning could ever be said 
to find its way into Mr. Barkis’s visage. 

Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what 
had been her home so many years, and where the two strong 
attachments of her life—for my mother and myself—had 
been formed. She had been walking in the churchyard, 
too, very early; and she got into the cart and sat in it with 
her handkerchief at her eyes. 

So long as she remained in this condition Mr. Barkis gave 
no sign of life whatever. He sat in his usual place and atti- 
tude, like a great stuffed figure. But when she began to look 
about her, and to speak to me, he nodded his head and grinned 


David Gopperfield 167 


several times. I have not the least notion at whom, or what 
he meant by it. 

“*It’s a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!’’ I said, as an act of 
politeness. 

“Tt ain’t bad,’’ said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified 
his speech, and rarely committed himself. 

‘“‘Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,’’ I re- 
marked, -for his satisfaction. 

**Ts she, though!’ said Mr. Barkis. 

After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis 
eyed her, and said: 

‘** Are you pretty comfortable?”’ 

Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative. 

‘‘But really and truly, you know. Are you?’’ growled 
Mr. Barkis, sliding nearer to her on the seat, and nudging 
her with hiselbow. ‘‘Are you? Really and truly pretty com- 
fortable? Are you? EKh?’’? At each of these inquiries Mr. 
Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and gave her another nudge; 
so that at last we were all crowded together in the left-hand 
corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed that I could hardly 
bear it. 

Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis 
gave me a little more room at once, and got away by degrees. 
But I could not help observing that he seemed to think he had 
hit upon a wonderful expedient for expressing himself in a 
neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without the incon- 
venience of inventing conversation. He manifestly chuckled 
over it for some time. By-and-by he turned to Peggotty 
again, and repeating, ‘‘Are you pretty comfortable, though?’’ 
bore down upon us as before, until the breath was nearly 
wedged out of my body. By-and-by he made another descent 
upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result. At 
length I got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing 
on the footboard, pretended to look at the prospect, after 
which I did very well. 

He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on 
our account, and entertained us with broiled mutton and beer. 


168 : Works of @harles Dickens 


Even when Peggotty was in the act of drinking, he was 
seized with one of those approaches, and almost choked her. 
But as we drew nearer to the end of our journey, he had 
more to do and less time for gallantry; and when we got 
on Yarmouth pavement, we were all too much shaken and 
jolted, 1 apprehend, to have any leisure for anything else. 

Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place. 
They received me and Peggottyin an affectionate manner, 
and shook hands with Mr. Barkis, who, with his hat on the 
very back of his head, and a shamefaced leer upon his counte- 
nance, and pervading his very legs, presented but a vacant 
appearance, I thought. They each took one of Peggotty’s 
trunks, and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly 
made a sign to me with his forefinger to come under an 
archway. 

‘‘T say,’’ growled Mr. Barkis, ‘‘it was all right.”’ 

I looked up into his face and answered, with an attempt 
to be very profound: ‘‘Oh!”’ 

‘Tt didn’t come to an end there,’’ said Mr. Barkis, nod- 
ding confidentially. ‘‘It was all right.”’ 

Again I answered, ‘‘Oh!”’ 

‘‘You know who was willin’, 
was Barkis, and Barkis only.”’ 

1 nodded assent. 

‘“‘Tt’s all right,’’ said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; ‘‘I’m 
a friend of your’n. You made it all right, first. It’s all 
right.”’ ae 

In his attempts to be particularly lucid Mr. Barkis was 
so extremely mysterious that I might have stood looking in 
his face for an hour, and most assuredly should have got as 
much information out of it as out of the face of a clock that 
had stopped, but for Peggotty’s calling me away. As we 
were going along she asked me what he had said, and I told 
her he had said it was all right. 

‘‘Like his impudence!”’ said Peggotty, ‘‘but I don’t vaitid 
that! Davy, dear, what should you think if I was to think 
of being married?”’ 


99 


said my friend. Gig 


David Gopperfield 169 


‘‘Why—lI suppose you would like me as much then, Peg- 
gotty, as you do now?”’ I returned, after a little consideration. 

Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers on the street, 
as well as of her relations going on before, the good soul was 
obliged to stop and embrace me on the spot, with many pro- 
testations of her unalterable love. 

“‘Tell me what should you say, darling?’’ she asked 
again, when this was over, and we were walking on. 

‘If you were thinking of being married—to Mr. Barkis, 
Peggotty ?”’ 

““Yes,’’ said Peggotty. 

‘“*T should think it would be a very good thing. For then 
you know, Peggotty, you would always have the horse and 
cart to bring you over to see me, and could come for noth- 
ing, and be sure of coming.”’ 

‘‘The sense of the dear!’ cried Peggotty. ‘‘What I have 
been thinking of this month back! Yes, my precious; and 
I think I should be more independent altogether, you see; let 
alone my working with a better heart in my own house than 
I could in anybody else’s now. I don’t know what I might 
be fit for, now, as a servant to a stranger. And | shall be 
always near my pretty’s resting-place,’’ said Peggotty, mus- 
ing, ‘“‘and be able to see it when I like; and when J lie down 
to rest, I may be laid not far off from my darling girl!” 

We neither of us said anything for a little while. 

‘*But I wouldn’t so much as give it another thought,” 
said Peggotty, cheerily, ‘‘if my Davy was anyways against 
it—not if 1 had been asked in church thirty times three times 
over, and was wearing out the ring in my pocket.”’ 

‘‘Look at me, Peggotty,’’ I replied; ‘‘and see if 1 am not 
really glad, and don’t truly wish it!’?? As indeed 1 did, with 
all my heart. 

‘*Well, my life,’’ said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, “‘I 
have thought of it night and day, every way | can, and I 
hope the right way; but I’ll think of it again, and speak to 
my brother about it, and in the meantime we’ll keep it to 
ourselves, Davy, you and me. Barkis is a good, plain 


170 Works of @harles Dickens 


creetur’,’’ said Peggotty, ‘‘and if I tried to do my duty 
by him, 1 think it would be my fault if 1 wasn’t—if 1 wasn’t 
pretty comfortable,’’ said Peggotty, laughing heartily. 

This quotation from Mr. Barkis was so appropriate, and 
tickled us both so much, that we laughed again and again, 
and were quite in a pleasant humor when we came in view 
of Mr. Peggotty’s cottage. 

1t looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have 
shrunk a little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting 
at the door as if she had stood there ever since. All within 
was the same, down to the seaweed in the blue mug in my 
bedroom. I went into the outhouse to look about me, and 
the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish, possessed by the 
same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be 
in the same state of conglomeration in the same old corner. 

But there was no little Em/’ly to be seen, so 1 asked Mr. 
Peggotty where she was. 

‘‘She’s at school, sir,’? said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the 
heat consequent on the porterage of Peggotty’s box from 7 
forehead; ‘‘she’ll be home,’’ looking at the Dutch clock, ‘‘1 
from Sirshily minutes to half-an-hour’s time. We all on us 
feel the loss of her, bless ye!’ 

Mrs. Gummidge moaned. 

‘‘Cheer up, mawther!’’ cried Mr. Peggotty. 

‘*] feel it more than anybody else,’’ said Mrs. Gummidge; 
‘*T’m a lone lorn creetur’, and she used to be a’most the only 
think that didn’t go contrairy with me.”’ 

Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, ap- 
plied herself to blowing the fire. Mr. Peggotty, looking 
round upon us while, she was so engaged, said, in alow © 
voice, which he shaded with his hand: ‘‘The old ’un!”’ 
From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement had 
taken place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gum- 
midge’s spirits. é 

Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite 
as delightful a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me 
in the same way. I felt rather disappointed with it. Per- 


David @opperfield 171 


haps it was because little Hm’ly was not at home. - I knew 
the way by which she would come, and presently found my- 
self strolling along the path to meet her. 

A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon 
knew it to be Em’ly, who was a little creature still in stature, 
though she was grown. But when she drew nearer, and I 
saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her dimpled face looking 
brighter, and. her own self prettier and gayer, a curious feel- 
ing came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and 
pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I 
have done such a thing since in later life, or I am mistaken. 

Little Em/’ly didn’t care a bit. She saw me well enough; 
but instead of turning round and calling after me, ran away 
laughing. This obliged me to run after her, and she ran so 
fast that we were very near the cottage before I caught her. 

**Oh, it’s you, is it?’’ said little Km’ly. 

*“Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly,’’ said I. 

**And didn’t you know who it was?’’ said Em’ly. I was 
going to kiss her, but she covered her cherry lips with her 
hands, and said she wasn’t a baby now, and ran away, 
laughing more than ever, into the house. 

She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change 
in her I wondered at very much. The tea-table was ready, 
and our little locker was put out in its old place, but instead 
of coming to sit by me, she went and bestowed her company 
upon that grumbling Mrs. Gummidge, and on Mr. Peggotty’s 
inquiring why, rumpled her hair all over her face to hide it, 
and would do nothing but laugh. 

‘* A little puss it is!’ said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with . 
his great hand. 

‘“So sh’ is! so sh’ is!’’? cried Ham. ‘‘Mas’r Davy bor, 
so sh’ is!’ and he sat and chuckled at her for some time, 
in a state of mingled admiration and delight, that made his 
face a burning red. 

Little Em’ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no 
one more than Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have 
coaxed into anything by only going and laying her cheek 


172 Works of Charles Dickens 


against his rough whisker. That was my opinion, at least, 
when I saw her do it; and 1 held Mr. Peggotty to be thor- 
oughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet- 
natured, and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly 
and shy at once, that she captivated me more than ever. 

She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round 
the fire after tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over 
his pipe to the loss 1 had sustained, the tears stood in her 
eyes, and she looked at me so kindly across the table thes I 
felt quite thankful to her. 

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and run- 
ning them over his hand like water, ‘‘here’s another orphan, 
you see, sir. And here,’’ said Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham 
a back-handed knock in the chest, ‘‘is another of ’em, though 
he don’t look much like it.”’ 

‘If 1 had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,”’ said 
I, shaking my head, ‘‘I don’t think I should feel much 
like it.’ 

‘Well said, Mas’r Davy, bor!’ cried Ham, in an ecstasy. 
‘*Hoorah! Well said! Nor more you wouldn’t!’’ 

‘‘Hor! Hor!’’—Here he returned Mr. Peggotty’s back- 
hander, and little Em/’ly got up and kissed Mr. Peggotty. 

‘‘And how’s your friend, sir?’’ said Mr. Peggotty to me. 

‘*Steerforth?’’ said I. 

‘“That’s the name!’’ cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham. 
‘‘T knowed it was something in our way.”’ 

‘You said it was Rudderford,’’ observed Ham, laughing. 

‘*Well!’’ retorted Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘And ye steer with a 
rudder, don’t ye? lt ain’t fur off. How is he, sir?”’ 

‘*He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peg- 
gotty.”’ 

‘‘There’s a friend,’’ said Mr. Pep olty, stretching out his 
pipe. ‘‘There’s a friend, if you talk of friends! Why, Lord 
love my heart alive, if it ain’t a treat to look at him!”’ 

‘‘He is very handsome, is he not?’’ said I, my heart 
warming with this praise. 

*‘Handsome!’’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘He stands up to 


>) 


David @opperfield 173 


you like—like a—why, 1 don’t know what he don’t stand 
up to you like. He’s so bold!”’ 

“Yes! That’s just his character,’? said I. ‘‘He’s as 
brave as a lion, and you can’t think how frank he is, Mr. 
Peggotty.”’ 

‘‘And I do suppose, now,’”’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at 
me through the smoke of his pipe, ‘‘that in the way of book- 
learning he’d take the wind out of a’most anything.”’ 

**Yes,’’ said I, delighted; ‘‘he knows everything. He is 
astonishingly clever.”’ 

‘‘There’s a friend!’ murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a 
grave toss of his head. 

‘‘Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,’ said I. ‘‘He 
knows a task if he only looks at it. He is the best cricketer 
you ever saw. He will give you almost as many men as you 
like at draughts, and beat you easily.” 

Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to 
say: ‘‘Of course he will.’’ 

‘‘He is such a speaker,’’ I pursued, ‘‘that he can win 
anybody over; and I don’t know what you’d say if you 
were to hear him sing, Mr. Peggotty.’’ 

Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to 
say: ‘‘I have no doubt of it.”’ 

‘Then, he’s such a generous, fine, noble fellow,’’ said I, 
quite carried away by my favorite theme, “‘that it’s hardly 
possible to give him as much praise as he deserves. 1am 
sure 1 can never feel thankful enough for the generosity with 
which he has protected me, so much younger and lower in 
the school than himself.’’ 

I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested 
on little Em’ly’s face, which was bent forward over the table, 
listening with the deepest attention, her breath held, her blue 
eyes sparkling like jewels, and the color mantling in her 
cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily earnest and pretty 
that I stopped in a sort of wonder, and they all observed her 
at the same time; for, as 1 stopped, they laughed and looked 
at her. 


174 Works of Charles Diekens 


‘‘Eim’ly is like me,’’ said Peggotty, ‘‘and would like to 
see him.”’ 

Em/’ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung 
down her head, and her face was covered with blushes. 
Glancing up presently through her stray curls, and seeing 
that we were all looking at her still (I am sure I, for one, 
could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept 
away till it was nearly bedtime. 

I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, 
and the wind came moaning on across the flat as it had done 
before. But I could not help fancying, now, that it moaned 
of those who were gone; and instead of thinking that the 
sea might rise in the night and float the boat away, I thought 
of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those sounds, and 
drowned my happy home. 1 recollect, as the wind and water 
began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into 
my prayers, petitioning that 1 might grow up to marry little 
EKm/’ly, and so dropping lovingly asleep. 

The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, — 
except—it was a great exception—that little Km’ly and 1 
seldom wandered on the beach now. She had tasks to learn, 
and needlework to do, and was absent during a great part 
of each day. But I felt that we should not have had these 
old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full 
of childish whims as Em/’ly was, she was more of a little 
woman than I had supposed. She seemed to have got a 
great distance away from me, in little more than a year. 
She liked me, but she laughed at me, and tormented me; 
and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and 
was laughing at the door when 1 came back, disappointed. 
The best times were when she sat quietly at work in the 
doorway, and I sat on the wooden step at her feet, reading 
to her. It seems to me at this hour that I have never seen 
such sunlight as on those bright April afternoons; that I have 
never seen such a sunny little figure as I used to see sitting in 
the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld such sky, 
such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air. 


David Qopperfield 175 


On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis 
appeared in an exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, 
and with a bundle of oranges tied up in a handkerchief. As 
he made no allusion of any kind to this property, he was 
supposed to have left it behind him by accident when he 
went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, 
came back with the information that it was intended for 
Peggotty. After that occasion he appeared every evening at 
exactly the same hour, and always with a little bundle to 
which he never alluded, and which he regularly put behind 
the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of 
a most various and eccentric description. Among them I re- 
member a double set of pigs’ trotters, a huge pin-cushion, 
half a bushel or so of apples, a pair of jet-earrings, some 
Spanish onions, a box of dominoes, a eAune ye Pert and cage, 
and a leg of pickled pork. 

Mr. Barkis’s wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of 
a peculiar kind. He very seldom said anything; but would 
sit by the fire in much the same attitude as he sat in his cart, 
and stare heavily at Peggotty, who was opposite. One 
night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he made a dart 
at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put it 
in his waistcoat pocket and carried it off. After that his 
great delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking 
to the lining of his pocket, in a partially-melted state, and 
pocket it again when it was done with. He seemed to enjoy 
himself very much, and not to feel at all called upon to talk. 
Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the flats, he 
had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting him- 
self with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfort- 
able; and I remember that sometimes, after he was gone, 
Peggotty would throw her apron over her face and laugh for 
half an hour. Indeed, we were all more or less amused, ex- 
cept that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose courtship would 
appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she was so 
continually reminded by these transactions of the old one. 

At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, 


176 Works of Charles Dickens 


it was given out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going 
to make a day’s holiday together, and that little Km’ly and 
l were to accompany them. I had but a broken sleep the 
night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of a whole day 
with Em’ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; 
and while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in 
the distance, driving a chaise-cart toward the object of his 
affections. | 

Peggotty was dressed as usual in her neat and quiet 
mourning; but Mr. Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of 
which the tailor had given him such good measure that the 
cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary in the coldest 
weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his hair 
up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, 
were of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab panta- 
loons and a-buff waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenome- 
non of respectability. 

When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found 
that Mr. Peggotty was prepared with an old shoe, which was 
to be thrown after us for luck, and which he offered to Mrs. 
Gummidge for that purpose. 

‘“‘No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,”’ 
said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’ myself, and 
everythink that. reminds me of creeturs that ain’t lone and 
lorn, goes contrairy with me.”’ 

‘‘Come, old gal!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘Take and 
heave it,”’ | 

‘*No, Dan’l,’’ returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and 
shaking her head. ‘“‘If I felt less, 1 could do more. You 
don’t feel like me, Dan’l; thinks don’t go contrairy with 
you, nor you with them; you had better do it yourself.”’ 

But here Peggotty, who had been goihg about from one 
to another in a hurried way, kissing everybody, called out 
from the cart, in which we all were by this time (Em’ly and 
I on two little chairs, side by side), that Mrs. Gummidge 
must doit. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry to 
relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our depart- 


David Gopperfield A oF 


ure, by immediately bursting into tears and sinking subdued 
into the arms of Ham, with the declaration that she knowed 
she was a burden, and had better be carried to the house at 
onee. Which I really thought was a sensible idea that Ham 
might have acted on. 

Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and 
the first thing we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. 
Barkis tied the horse to some rails, and went in with Peg- 
gotty, leaving little Em’ly and me alone in the chaise. I 
took that occasion to put my arm round Km’ly’s waist, and 
propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we 
should determine to be very affectionate to one another, and 
very happy all day. Little Km/’ly consenting, and allowing 
me to kiss her, I became desperate; informing her, I rec- 
ollect, that I never could love another, and that I was pre- 
pared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to 
her affections. 

How merry little Km’ly made herself about it! With 
what a demure assumption of being immensely older and 
wiser than I, the fairy little woman said | was ‘“‘a silly boy’’; 
and then laughed so charmingly that I forgot the pain of 
being called by that disparaging name in the pleasure of 
‘looking at her. - 

Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, 
but came out at last, and then we drove away into the coun- 
try. As we were going along, Mr. Barkis turned to me, and 
said, with a wink—by-the-by, 1 should hardly have thought, 
before, that he could wink: 

‘‘What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?”’ 

““Clara Peggotty,’’ I answered. 

‘What name would it be as I should write up now if 
there was a tilt here?”’ 

‘‘Clara Peggotty, again,’’ I suggested. 

‘‘Clara Peggotty Barkis!’’ he returned, and burst into a 
roar of laughter that shook the chaise. 

In a word, they were married, and had gone into the 
church for no other purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it 


1738 Works of Charles Diekens 


should be quietly done; and the clerk had given her away, 
and there had been no witnesses of the ceremony. She was 
a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt an- 
nouncement of their union, and could not hug me enough in 
token of her unimpaired affection; but she soon became her- 
self again, and said she was very glad it was over. 

We drove to a little inn in a byroad, where we were ex- 
pected, and where we had a very comfortable dinner, and 
passed the day with great satisfaction. If Peggotty had 
been married every day for the last ten years, she could 
hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no sort 
of difference in her—she was just the same as ever, and went 
out for a stroll with little Em’ly and me before tea, while 
Mr. Barkis philosophically smoked his pipe and enjoyed him- 
self, I suppose, with the contemplation of his happiness. If 
so, it sharpened his appetite; for I distinctly call to mind 
that, although he had eaten a good deal of pork and greens 
at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he was 
obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a 
large quantity without any emotion. 

1 have often thought since what an odd, innocent, out-of- 
the-way kind of wedding it must have been. We got into 
the chaise again soon after dark, and drove cosily back, look- © 
ing up at the stars, and talking about them. I was their 
chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis’s mind to an amaz- 
ing extent. J told him all I knew, but he would have be- 
lieved anything I might have taken it into my head to im- 
part to him; for he had a profound veneration for my 
abilities, and informed his wife in my hearing, on that very 
occasion, that I was ‘‘a young Roeshus’’—by which 1 think 
he meant prodigy. 

When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather 
when I had exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, 
little Em’ly and I made a cloak of an old wrapper, and sat 
under it for the rest of the journey. Ah! how I loved her. 
What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and were 
going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the 


David @opperfield 179 


fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children 
ever, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among 
flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night 
in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds 
when we were dead. Some such picture, with no real world 
in it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the 
stars afar off, was in my mind all the way. 1 am glad to 
think there were two such guileless hearts at Peggotty’s 
marriage as little Em’ly’s and mine. I am glad to think the 
Loyes and Graces took such airy forms in its homely pro- 
cession. 

Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at 
night; and there Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good by, and 
drove away snugly to their own home. I felt then, for the 
first time, that I had lost Peggotty. 1 should have gone to 
bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof but that 
which sheltered little Em’ly’s head. 

Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts 
as well as I did, and were ready with some supper and their 
hospitable faces to drive it away. Little Em’ly came and 
sat beside me on the locker for the only time in all that visit, 
and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful day. 

lt was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. 
Peggotty and Ham went out to fish. I felt very brave at 
being left alone in the solitary house, the protector of EKm/’ly 
and Mrs. Gummidge; and only wished that a lion or a ser- 
pent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack upon 
us, that I might destroy him and cover myself with glory. 
But as nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on 
Yarmouth flats that night, I provided the best substitute I 
could by dreaming of dragons until morning. 

With morning came Peggotty; who called to me as usual, 
under my window, as if Mr. Barkis, the carrier, had been 
from first to last a dream, too. After breakfast she took me 
to her own home, and a beautiful little home it was. Of all 
the movables in it, I must have been most impressed by a 
certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlor (the tile- 


180 Works of Charles Dickens 


floored kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreat- 
ing top which opened, let down, and became a desk, within 
which was a large quarto edition of Fox’s Book of Martyrs. 
This precious volume, of which | do not recollect one word, I 
immediately discovered and immediately applied myself to; 
and I never visited the house afterward but I kneeled on a 
chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, 
spread my arms over the desk, and fell to devouring the 
book afresh. I was chiefly edified, 1 am afraid, by the pict- 
ures, which were numerous, and represented all kinds of dis- 
mal horrors; but the martyrs and Peggotty’s house have 
been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now. 

I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gum- 
midge, and little Em’ly that day; and passed the night at 
Peggotty’s, in a little room in the roof (with the crocodile 
book on a shelf by the bed’s head), which was to be always 
mine, Peggotty said, and skould always be kept for me in 
exactly the same state. 

‘“Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and 
have this house over my head,’’ said Peggotty, ‘‘you shall 
find it as if I expected you here directly any minute. TI shall 
keep it every day, as I used to keep your old little room, my 
darling; and if you was to go to China you might think of 
it as being kept just the same all the time you were away.” 

I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse with 
all my heart, and thanked her as well as I could. That was 
not very well, for she spoke to me thus with her arms round 
my neck in the morning, and | was going home in the morn- 
ing, and 1 went home in the morning, with herself and Mr. 
Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate, not easily or 
lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go 
on, taking Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm 
trees looking at the house in which there was no face to look 
on mine with love or liking any more. 

And now TI fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot 
look back upon without compassion. I fell at. once into a 
solitary condition—apart from all friendly notice, apart from 


David @opperfield 181 


the society of all other boys of my own age, apart from all 
companionship but my own spiritless thoughts—which seems 
to cast its gloom upon this paper as | write. 

What would I have given to have been sent to the hardest 
school that ever was kept!—to have been taught something, 
anyhow, anywhere! No such hope dawned upon me. They 
disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly, steadily overlooked 
me. I think Mr. Murdstone’s means were straitened at 
about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not 
bear me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, 
to put away the notion that I had any claim upon him—and 
succeeded. 

I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; 
but the wrong that was done to me had no intervals of re- 
lenting, and was done in a systematic, passionless manner. 
Day after day, week after week, month after month, 1 was 
coldly neglected. 1 wonder sometimes, when I think of it, 
what they would have done if I had been taken with an ill- 
ness; whether 1 should have lain down in my lonely room, 
and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or 
whether anybody would have helped me out. c 

When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my 
meals with them; in their absence, I ate and drank by my- 
self. At all times I lounged about the house and neighbor- 
hood quite disregarded, except that they were jealous of my 
making any friends; thinking, perhaps, that if 1 did, lL 
might complain to some one. For this reason, though Mr. 
Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, 
having, some years before that, lost a little small light-haired 
wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own 
thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom 
that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his 
closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, 
with the smell of the whole pharmacopceia coming up my 
nose, or pounding something in a mortar under his mild 
directions. 

For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of 


182 Works of @harles Dickens 


her, I was seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to 
her promise, she either came to see me, or met me somewhere 
near, once every week, and never empty-handed; but many 
and bitter were the disappointments 1 had, in being refused 
permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few 
times, however, at long intervals, 1 was allowed to go there; 
and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a 
miser, or, as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was ‘‘a little 
near,’’? and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed, 
which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers. In 
this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious 
modesty that the smallest installments could only be tempted 
out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and 
elaborate scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Satur- 
day’s expenses. 

All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any prom- 
ise I had given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I 
should have been perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but 
for the old books. They were my only comfort; and 1 was 
as true to them as they were to me, and read them over and 
over I don’t know how many times more. 

I now approach a period of my life which I can never 
lose the remembrance of, while I remember anything; and 
the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, 
come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times. 

I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the list- 
less, meditative manner that my way of life engendered, 
when, turning the corner of a lane near our house, 1 came 
upon Mr. Murdstone walking with a gentleman. 1 was con- 
fused, and was going by them, when the gentleman cried: 

‘*What! Brooks?’ 

‘*No, sir, David Copperfield,’’ I said. 

‘*Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,’’ said the gentleman. 
‘You are Brooks of Sheffield. That’s your name.’’ 

At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentive- 
ly. His laugh coming to my remembrance, too, I knew him 
to be Mr. Quinion, whom | had gone over to Lowestoft with 


David @opperfield 183 


Mr. Murdstone to see, before—it is no matter—1 need not re- 
call when. 

‘*And how do you get on, and where are you being edu- 
cated, Brooks?’’ said Mr. Quinion. 

He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me 
about to walk with them. I did not know what to reply, 
- and glanced dubiously at Mr. Murdstone. 

‘*He is at home at present,’’ said the latter. ‘‘He is not 
being educated anywhere. I don’t know what to do with 
him. He is a difficult subject.”’ 

That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then 
his eye darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, 
elsewhere. 

‘‘Humph!”’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, 1 
thought. ‘‘Fine weather.’’ 

Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best 
disengage my shoulder from his hand, and go away, when 
he-said: ‘‘I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, 
Brooks?’ 

‘‘Ay, he is sharp enough,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, impa- 
tiently. ‘‘You had better let him go. He will not thank 
you for troubling him.”’ 

On this hint Mr. Quifiion released me, and I made the 
best of my way home. Looking back as I turned into the 
front garden, I saw Mr. Murdstone leaning against the 
wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion talking to him. 
They were both looking after me, and I felt that they were 
speaking of me. 

Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After break- 
fast the next morning I had put my chair away, and was go- 
ing out of the room, when Mr. Murdstone called me back. 
He then gravely repaired to another table, where his sister 
sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion, with his hands in his 
pockets, stood looking out of window, and I stood looking at 
them all. i 

‘‘David,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘‘to the young this is a 
world for action; not for moping and droning in.”’ 


184 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘*As you do,’’ added his sister. 

‘‘Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. Il say, 
David, to the young this is a world for action, and not for 
moping and droning in. It is especially so for a young boy 
of your disposition, which requires a great deal of correcting; 
and to which no greater service can be done than to force it 
to conform to the ways of the working world, and to bend - 
it and break it.”’ 

‘‘Hor stubbornness won’t do here,’’ said his sister. 
‘*What it wants is to be crushed. And crushed it must be. 
Shall be, too.’’ 

He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in ap- 
proval, and went on: 

‘‘] suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At 
any rate, you know it now. You have received some con- 
siderable education already. Education is costly; and even 
if it were not, and I could afford it, 1 am of opinion that it 
would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept ata 
school. Whatis before you is a Bent with the world; and 
the sooner you begin it the better.’ 

1 think it occurred to me that I had already begun it in 
my poor way—but it occurs to me now whether or no. 

‘“You have heard ‘the counting-house’ mentioned some- 
times,’’ said Mr. Murdstone. 

‘The counting-house, sir?’’ 1 repeated. 

‘‘Of Murdstone & Grinby, in the wine trade,’ he replied. 

I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily: . 

‘“You have heard the ‘counting-house’ mentioned, or the 
business, or the cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.’’ 

*‘T think 1 have heard the business mentioned, sir,’’ I 
said, remembering what I vaguely knew of his and his sis- 
ter’s resources. ‘‘But I don’t know when.’’ 

‘It does not matter when,’’ he returned. ‘‘Mr. Quinion 
manages that business.’’ 

I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking 
out of window. 

‘‘Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some 


David @opperfield 185 


other boys, and that he sees no reason why it shouldn’t, on 
the same terms, give employment to you.’’ 

*‘He having,’’ Mr. Quinion observed, in a low voice, and 
half-turning round, ‘‘no other prospect, Murdstone.”’ 

Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gest- 
ure, resumed, without noticing what he had said: 

‘“Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself 
to provide for your eating, and drinking, and pocket-money. 
Your lodging (which I have arranged for) will be paid by 
me. So will your washing—’’ 

‘**W hich will be kept down to my estimate,’ said his sister. 

**Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,’’ said 
Mr. Murdstone; ‘‘as you will not be able, yet a while, to get 
them for yourself. So you are now going to London, David, 
with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on your own account.’’ 

‘‘In short, you are provided for,’’ observed his sister; 
‘fand will please to do your duty.’’ 

Though I quite understood that the purpose of this an- 
nouncement was to get rid of me, I have no distinct remem- 
brance whether it pleased or frightened me. My impression 
is, that I was in a state of confusion about it, and, oscillating 
between the two points, touched neither. Nor had I much 
time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was 
to go upon the morrow. 

Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white 
hat, with a black crape round it for my mother, a black 
jacket, and a pair of hard, stiff, corduroy trousers—which 
Miss Murdstone considered the best armor for the legs in 
that fight with the world which was now to come off: behold 
me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a 
small trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge 
might have said) in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr. 
Quinion to the London coach at Yarmouth! See how our 
house and church are lessening in the distance; how the 
grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects; 
how the spire points upward from my old playground no 
more, and the sky is empty! 


186 Works of Charles Dickens 


CHAPTER..ELEVEN 


I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON’T LIKE IT 


I KNOW enough of the world now to have almost lost the 
capacity of being much surprised by anything; but it is 
matter of some surprise to me, even now, that I can have 
been so easily thrown away at such an age. A child of ex- 
cellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation, quick, 
eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems 
wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign 
in my behalf. But none was made; and I became, at ten 
years old, a little laboring hind in the service of Murdstone 
& Grinby. | 

Murdstone & Grinby’s warehouse was at the water side. 
It was down in Blackfriars. Modern improvements have 
altered the place; but it was the last house at the bottom 
of a narrow street, curving down hill to the river, with some 
stairs at the end, where people took boat. I1t was a crazy old 
house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when 
the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and 
literally overrun with rats. Its paneled rooms discolored 
with the dirt and smoke of a hundred years, | dare say; its 
decaying floors and staircase; the squeaking and scuffling of 
the old yray rats down in the cellars; and the dirt and rot- 
tenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago, in 
my mind, but of the present instant. They are all before 
me, just as they were in the evil hour when | went among 
them for the first time, with my trembling hand in Mr. 
(Juinion’s. 

Murdstone & Grinby’s trade was among a good many 
kinds of people, but an important branch of it was the supply 
of wines and spirits to certain packet ships. 1 forget now 
where they chiefly went, but I think there were some among 


David Copperfield 187 


them that made voyages both to the Kast and West Indies. 
1 know that a great many empty bottles were one of the con- 
sequences of this traffic, and that certain men and boys were 
employed to examine them against the light, and reject those 
that were flawed, and to rinse and wash them. When the 
empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be pasted on full 
ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put upon 
the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All 





I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON’T LIKE IT 


this work was my work, and of the boys employed upon it. 
I was one. 

There were three or four of us, counting me. My work- 
ing place was established in a corner of the warehouse where 
Mr. Quinion could see me, when he chose to stand up on the 
bottom rail of his stool in the counting-house, and look at me 
through a window above the desk. Hither, on the first morn- 
ing of my so auspiciously beginning life on my own account, 
the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my 


188 Works of Charles Diekens 


business. His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged 
apron and a paper cap. He informed me that his father was 
a bargeman, and walked, in a black velvet headdress, in the 
Lord Mayor’s Show. He also informed me that our prin- 
cipal associate would be another boy whom he introduced 
by the—to me—-extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes. 1 
discovered, however, that this youth had not been christened 
by that name, but that it had been bestowed upon him in the 
warehouse, on account of his complexion, which was pale or 
mealy. Mealy’s father was a waterman, who had the addi- 
tional distinction of being a fireman, and was engaged as 
such at one of the large theaters, where some young rela- 
tion of Mealy’s—I think his little sister—did Imps in the 
Pantomimes. : 

No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I 
sunk into this companionship, compared these henceforth 
every-day associates with those of my happier childhood— 
not to say with Steerforth, Traddles, and the rest of those 
. boys; and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and 
distinguished man crushed in my bosom. The deep remem- 
brance of the sense I had of being utterly without hope now; 
of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to 
my young heart to believe that day by day what I had 
learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy 
and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by 
little, never to be brought back any more, cannot be written. 
As often as Mick Walker went away in the course of that 
forenoon I mingled my tears with the water in which I was 
washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there were a flaw in 
my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting. 

The counting-house clock was at half-past twelve, and 
there was general preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. 
(Juinion tapped at the counting-house window, and beckoned 
to me to goin. I went in, and found there a stoutish, middle- 
aged person, in a brown surtout and black tights and shoes, 
with no more hair upon his head (which was a large one, and 
very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very ex- 


David @opperfield 189 


tensive face, which he turned full upon me. Hisclothes were 
shabby, but he had an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried . 
a jaunty sort of a stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it, 
and a quizzing-glass hung outside his coat—for ornament, I 
afterward found, as he very seldom looked through it, and 
couldn’t see anything when he did. 

‘*This,’’ said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to myself, ‘‘is he.’’ 

‘*This,’’ said the stranger, with a certain condescending 
roll in his voice, and a certain indescribable air of doing 
something genteel, which impressed me very much, ‘‘is Master 
Copperfield. I hope I see you well, sir?”’ 

I said 1 was very well, and hoped he was. I was suffi- 
ciently ill at ease, Heaven knows; but it was not in my nature 
to complain much at that time of my life, so 1 said I was very 
well, and hoped he was. 

‘‘T am,”’ said the stranger, ‘‘thank Heaven, quite well. 
I have received a letter from Mr. Murdstone, in which he 
mentions that he would desire me to receive into an apart- 
ment in the rear of my house, which is at present unoccupied> 
—and is, in short, to be let as a—in short,”’ said the stranger, 
with a smile, and in a burst of confidence, ‘‘as a bedroom— 
the young beginner whom I have now the pleasure to—-’’ and 
the stranger waved ae hand and settled his chin in his shirt 
collar. 

‘“‘This is Mr. Micawber,’’ said Mr. Quinion to me. 

‘¢Ahem!’’ said the stranger, ‘‘that is my name.”’ 

‘“Mr. Micawber,’’ said Mr. Quinion, “‘is known to Mr. 
Murdstone. He takes orders for us on commission, when 
he can get any. He has been written to by Mr. Murdstone 
on the subject of your lodgings, and he will receive you as 
a lodger.’’ 

‘“My address,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘is Windsor Terrace, 
City Road. 1—in short,’’ said Mr. Micawber, with the same 
genteel air, and in another burst of confidence—‘‘I live there.”’ 

I made him a bow. 

‘Under the impression,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘that your 
peregrinations in.this metropolis have not as yet been exten- 


190 Works of Charles Dickens 


sive, and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating 
the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction of the City 
Road—in short,’’ said Mr. Micawber, in another burst of 








MR. MICAWBER IMPRESSING THE NAMES OF STREETS AND THE SHAPES 
OF CORNER HOUSES UPON ME AS WE WENT ALONG, THAT I 
MIGHT FIND MY WAY BACK EASILY IN THE MORNING 


confidence, ‘‘that you might lose yourself—I shall be happy 
to call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the - 
nearest way.’’ 1 thanked him with all my heart, for it was 
friendly in him to offer to take that trouble. 


David Copperfield 191 


** At what hour,’”’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘shall I—’’ 

‘*At about eight,’’ said Mr. Quinion. 

““At about eight,’’? said Mr. Micawber. ‘‘I beg to wish 
you good-day, Mr. Quinion. I will intrude no longer.’’ 

So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under 
his arm; very upright, and humming a tune when he was 
clear of the counting-house. 

Mr. Quinion then formally engaged me to be as useful as 
I could in the warehouse of Murdstone & Grinby, at a 
salary, I think, of six shillings a week. I am not clear 
whether it was six or seven. I am inclined to believe, from 
my uncertainty on this head, that it was six at first and seven 
afterward. He paid me a week down (from his own pocket, 
I believe) and 1 gave Mealy sixpence out of it to get my trunk 
carried to Windsor Terrace at night; it being too heavy for 
my strength, small as it was. I paid sixpence more for my 
dinner, which was a meat pie and a turn ata neighboring 
pump, and passed the hour which was allowed for that meal 
in walking about the streets. 

At the appointed time in the evening, Mr. Micawber reap- 
peared. I washed my hands and face, to do the greater honor 
to his gentility, and we walked to our house, as I suppose I 
must now call it, together, Mr. Micawber impressing the 
names of streets and the shapes of corner houses upon me 
as we went along, that I might find my way back easily, in 
the morning. 

Arrived at his house in Windsor Terrace (which I noticed 
was shabby like himself, but also, like himself, made all the 
show it could), he presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin 
and faded lady, not at all young, who was sitting in the 
parlor (the first floor was altogether unfurnished, and the 
blinds were kept down to delude the neighbors), with a baby 
at her breast. This baby was one of twins; and I may re- 
mark here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the 
family, saw both the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber 
at the same time. One of them was always taking refresh- 
ment. 


192 Works of Charles Dickens 


There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged 
about four, and Miss Micawber, aged about three. These, 
and a dark-complexioned young woman, with a habit of 
snorting, who was servant to the family, and informed me, 
before half-an-hour had expired, that she was ‘‘a Orfling,”’ 
and came from St. Luke’s workhouse, in the neighborhood, 
completed the establishment. My room was at the top of 
the house, at the back; a close chamber, stenciled all over 








I AM PRESENTED TO MRS. MICAWBER 


with an ornament which my young imagination represented 
as a blue muffin, and very scantily furnished. 

“‘T never thought,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, when she came 
up, twin and all, to show me the apartment, and sat down 
to take breath, ‘‘before I was married, when 1 lived with 
papa and mama, that I should ever find it necessary to take 
a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all con- 
siderations of private feeling must give way.” 

I said: ‘‘ Yes, ma’am.’’ 


David @opperfield 193 


“Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are almost overwhelming 
just at present,’’ said Mrs. Micawber; ‘‘and whether it is 
possible to bring him through them, I don’t know. When 
I lived at home with papa and mama, I really should have 
hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which 
I now employ it, but experientia does it—as papa used to 
say.’’ 

I cannot satisfy-myself whether she told me that Mr. 
Micawber had been an officer in. the Marines, or whether I 
have imagined it. I only know that I believe to this hour 
that he was in the Marines once upon a time, without know- 
ing why. He was a sort of town traveler for a number of 
miscellaneous houses, now; but made little or nothing of it, 
I am afraid. 

“Tf Mr. Micawber’s creditors will not give him time,’’ 
said Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘they must take the consequences; and 
the sooner they bring it to an issue the better. Blood cannot 
be obtained from a stone, neither can anything on account 
be obtained at present (not to mention law expenses) from 
Mr. Micawber.”’ 

I never can quite understand whether my precocious self- 
dependence confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, 
or whether she was so full of the subject that she would have 
talked about it to the very twins if there had been nobody 
else to communicate with, but this was the strain in which 
she began, and she went on accordingly all the time I knew 
her. 

Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried to exert 
herself; and so, I have no doubt, she had. The center of 
the street door was perfectly covered with a great brass 
plate, on which was engraved ‘‘Mrs. Micawber’s Boarding 
Kstablishment for Young Ladies’’; but I never found that 
any young lady had ever been to school there; or that any 
young lady ever came, or proposed to come; or that the least 
preparation was ever made to receive any young lady. The 
only visitors I ever saw or heard of were creditors. They 
used to come at all hours, and some of them were quite fero- 

Vou. II—(%) 


194 Works of Charles Diekens 


cious. One dirty-faced man, I think he was a boot-maker, 
used to edge himself into the passage as early as seven o’clock 
in the morning, and call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber: 
‘Come! You ain’t out yet, you know. Pay us, will you? 
Don’t hide, you know; that’s mean. I wouldn’t be mean 
if Iwas you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us, d’ye 
hear? Come!’’. Receiving no answer to these taunts, he 
would mount in his wrath to the words ‘‘swindlers’’ and 
‘‘robbers,’’ and these being ineffectual, too, would sometimes 
go to the extremity of crossing the street, and roaring up at 
the windows of the second floor, where he knew Mr. Micaw- 
ber was. At these times, Mr. Micawber would be transported 
with grief and mortification, even to the length (as 1 was 
once made aware by a scream from his wife) of making mio- 
tions at himself with a razor; but within half an hour after- 
ward he would polish up his shoes with extraordinary pains, 
and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of gentility 
than ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic. I have 
known her to be thrown into fainting fits by the king’s 
taxes at three o’clock, and to eat lamb chops, breaded, and 
drink warm ale (paid for with two teaspoons that had gone 
to the pawnbroker’s) at four. On one occasion, when an 
execution had just been put in, coming home through some 
chance as early as six o’clock, I saw her lying (of course with 
a twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all tern 
about her face; but I never knew her more cheerful than 
she was, that very same night, over a veal cutlet before the 
kitchen fire, telling me stories about her papa and mama, 
and the company they used to keep. 

In this house, and with this family, 1 passed my leisure 
time. My own exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a 
pennyworth of milk, I provided myself; I kept another small 
loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a particular shelf of a par- 
ticular cupboard, to make my supper on when I came back 
at night. This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, 1 
know well; and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had 
to support myself on that money all the week. From Mon- 


David Copperfield 195 


day morning until Saturday night 1 had no advice, no coun- 
sel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no 
support of any kind, from any one, that 1 can call to mind, 
as 1 hope to go to heaven. 

I was so young and childish, and so little qualified—how 
could I be otherwise?—to undertake the whole charge of my 
own existence, that often, in going to Murdstone & Grinby’s of 
a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale 
at half-price at the pastrycook’s doors, and spent in that the 
money I should have kept for my dinner. Then, I went with- 
out my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding. I re- 
member two pudding-shops between which I was divided, 
according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. 
Martin’s Church—at the back of the church—which is now 
removed altogether. The pudding at that shop was made 
of currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear, 
two pennyworth not being larger than a pennyworth of more 
ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the 
Strand—somewhere in that part which has been rebuilt since. 
It was a stout, pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with 
great flat raisins in it, stuck in whole at wide distances apart. 
It came up hot at about my time every day, and many a day. 
did I dine off it. When 1 dined regularly and handsomely, 
I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a fourpenny plate of red 
beef from a cook’s shop, or a plate of bread and cheese and 
a glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite 
our place of business, called the Lion, or the Lion and some- 
thing else that I have forgotten. Once, I remember carry- 
ing my own bread (which I had brought from home in the 
morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper, like 
a book, and going to a famous alamode beef house near 
Drury Lane, and ordering a ‘‘small plate’’ of that delicacy 
to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange 
little apparition céming in all alone, I don’t know; but I can 
see him now, staring at me as 1 ate my dinner, and bringing 
up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny for 
himself, and 1 wish he hadn’t taken it. 


196 Works of Charles Dickens 


We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had 
money enough, I used to get half-a-pint of ready-made 
coffee and a slice of bread and butter. When I had none, 
I used to look at a venison-shop in Fleet Street; or I have 
strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent Garden Market, and 
stared at the pineapples. 1 was fond of wandering about the 
Adelphi, because it was a mysterious place with those dark 
arches. 1 see myself emerging one evening from some of 
these arches, on a little public-house close to the river, with 
an open space before it, where some coalheavers were danc- 
ing, to look at whom I sat down upon a bench. I wonder 
what they thought of me. 

I was such a child, and so little, that frequently, when I 
went into the bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale 
or porter, to moisten what 1 had had for dinner, they were 
afraid to give it me. JI remember one hot evening I went 
into the bar of a public-house, and said to the landlord: 

‘‘What is your best—your very best—ale a glass?’’ For 
it was a special occasion. I don’t know what. It may have 
been my birthday. 

‘“T'wopence-halfpenny,’’ says the landlord, ‘‘is the price 
of the Genuine Stunning ale.”’ 

““Then,’’ says I, producing the money, ‘‘just draw me 
a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good 
head to it.”’ 

The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from 
head to foot, with a strange smile on bis face; and instead 
of drawing the beer, looked round the screen and said some- 
thing to his wife. She came out from behind it, with her 
work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me. Here 
we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his shirt | 
sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife 
looking over the little half door; and I, in some confusion, 
looking up at them from outside the partition. They asked 
me a good many questions; as, what my name was, how old 
I was, where I lived, how I was employed, and how I came 
there. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I in- 


’ 


David @opperfield 197 


vented, I am afraid, appropriate answers. They served me 
with the ale, though I suspect it was not the Genuine Stun- 
ning, and the landlord’s wife, opening the little half-door of 
’ the bar, and bending down, gave me my money back, and 
gave me a kiss that was half-admiring, and half-compassion- 
ate, but all womanly and good, I am sure. 

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and uninten- 
tionally, the scantiness cf my resources, or the difficulties 
of my life. I know that if a shilling were given me by Mr. 
Q@uinion at any time, I spent it in a dinner ora tea. I know 
that I worked from morning untii night, with common men 
and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the 
streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. 1 know that, 
but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any 
care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond. 

Yet I held some station at Murdstone & Grinby’s, too. 
Besides that Mr. Quinion did what a careless man so occu- 
pied, and dealing with a thing so anomalous, could, to treat 
me as one upon a different footing from the rest, I never 
said, to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there, or 
gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there. 
That 1 suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no 
one ever knew but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have 
said already, utterly beyond my power to tell. But I kept 
my own counsel, and I did my work. I knew from the first 
that if I could not do my work as well as any of the rest, I 
could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon be- 
came at least as expeditious and as skillful as either of the 
other boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, my con- 
duct and manner were different enough from theirs to place 
a space between us. They and the men generally spoke of 
me as ‘‘the little gent,’’ or ‘‘the young Suffolker.’’ A cer- 
tain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers, 
and another named Tipp, who was the carman, and wore a 
red jacket, used to address me sometimes as ‘‘David’’—but 
I think it was mostly when we were very contidential, and 
when I had made some efforts to entertain them, over our 


198 Works of Charles Dickens 


work, with some results of the old readings—which were 
fast perishing out of my remembrance. Mealy Potatoes up- 
rose once, and rebelled against my being so distinguished— 
but Mick Walker settled him in no time. . 

My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite 
hopeless, and abandoned, as such, altogether. I am solemn- 
ly convinced that I never for one hour was reconciled to it, 
or was otherwise than miserably unhappy; but I bore it; 
and even to Peggotty, partly for the love of her, and partly 
for shame, never in any letter (though many passed between 
us) revealed the truth. 

Mr. Micawber’s difficulties were an addition to the dis- 
tressed state of my mind. In my forlorn state I became 
quite attached to the family, and used to walk about, busy 
with Mrs. Micawber’s calculations of ways and means, and 
heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber’s debts. On a Sat- 
urday night, which was my grand treat—partly because it 
was a great thing to walk home with six or seven shillings 
in my pocket, looking into the shops and thinking what such 
a sum would buy, and partly because I went home early— 
Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confi- 
dences to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the 
portion of tea or coffee I had bought over night in a little 
shaving-pot, and sat late at my breakfast. It was nothing 
at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob violently at the be- 
ginning of one of these Saturday night conversations, and 
sing about Jack’s delight being his lovely Nan, toward the 
end of it. JI have known him come home to supper with a 
flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left 
but a jail; and go to bed making a calculation of the expense 
of putting bow-windows to the house, ‘‘in case anything 
turned up,’’ which was his favorite expression. And Mrs. 
Micawber was just the same. 

A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, 
in our respective circumstances, sprung up between me and 
these people, notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our 
years. But I never allowed myself to be prevailed upon to 


David fopperfield 199 


accept any invitation to eat and drink with them out of their 
stock (knowing that they got on badly with the butcher and 
baker, and had often not too much for themselves), until Mrs. 
Micawber took me into her entire confidence. This she did 
one evening as follows: 

**Master Copperfield,’’. said Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘I make no 
stranger of you, and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. 
Micawber’s difficulties are coming to a crisis.”’ 

It made me very miserable to hear it, and | looked at Mrs. 
Micawber’s red eyes with the utmost sympathy. 

‘* With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese—which 
is not adapted to the wants of a young family’’—said Mrs. 
Micawber, ‘‘there is really not a scrap of anything in the 
larder. Iwas accustomed to speak of the larder when I lived 
with papa and mama, and 1 used the word almost uncon- 
sciously. What I mean to express is, that there is nothing 
to eat in the house.”’ 

**Dear me!’’ I said, in great concern. 

I had two or three shillings of my week’s money in my 
pocket—from which I presume that it must have been on a 
Wednesday night when we held this conversation—and I 
hastily produced them, and with heartfelt emotion begged 
Mrs. Micawber to accept of them asa loan. But that lady, 
kissing me, and making me put them back in my pocket, 
replied that she couldn’t think of it. 

‘‘No, my dear Master Copperfield,’’ said she, ‘‘far be it 
from my thoughts! But you have a discretion beyond your 
years, and can render me another kind of service, if you will, 
and a service [ will thankfully accept of.”’ 

I begged Mrs. Micawber to name it. 

‘‘T have parted with the plate myself,’ said Mrs. Micaw- 
ber. ‘*Six tea, two salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at 
different times borrowed money on, in secret, with my own 
hands. But the twins are a great tie; and to me, with my 
recollections of papa and mama, these transactions are very 
painful. There are still a few trifles that we could part with. 
Mr. Micawber’s feelings would never allow him to dispose of 


200 Works of Charles Dickens 


them: and Clickett’’—this was the girl from the workhouse 
—‘‘being of a vulgar mind, would take painful liberties if 
so much confidence was reposed in her. Master Copperfield, 
if I might ask you—”’ 

1 understood Mrs. Micawber now, and begged her to make 
use of me to any extent. JI began to dispose of the more 
portable articles of property that very evening; and went out 
on a similar expedition almost every morning, before I went 
to Murdstone & Grinby’s. 

Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little chiffonier, hil 
he called the library; and those went first. I carried them, 
one after another, to a bookstall in the City Road—one part 
of which, near our house, was almost all bookstalls and bird- 
shops then—and sold them for whatever they would bring. 
The keeper of this bookstall, who lived in a little house behind 
it, used to get tipsy every night, and to be violently scolded 
by his wife every morning. More than once, when I went 
there early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, 
with a cut in his forehead or a black eye, bearing witness 
to his excesses over night (I am afraid he was quarrelsome 
in his drink), and he, with a shaking hand, endeavoring to 
find the needful shillings in one or other of the pockets of his 
clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, with a baby 
in her arms, and her shoes.down at heel, never left off rating 
him. Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would 
ask me to call again; but his wife had always got some— 
had taken his, I daresay, while he was drunk—and secretly 
completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went down 
together. 

At the pawnbroker’s shop, too, I began to be very well 
known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the 
counter took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, 
I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conju- 
gate a Latin verb in his ear, while he transacted my business, 
After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a little treat, 
which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar 
relish in these meals which I well remember. 


David @opperfield 201 


At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, and 
he was arrested early one morning, and carried over to the 
King’s Bench Prison in the Borough. He told me, as he 
went out of the house, that the God of day had now gone 
down upon him—and I really thought his heart was broken, 
and mine, too. But I heard afterward that he was seen to 
play a lively game of skittles, before noon. 

On the first Sunday after he was taken there, 1 was to go 
and see him, and have dinner with him. I was to ask my 
way to such a place, and just short of that place I should 
see such another place, and just short of that I should see 
a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on until I 
saw a turnkey. All this I did, and when at last I did see 
a turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, 
when Roderick Random was in a debtors’ prison, there 
was a man there with nothing on him but an old rug, the 
turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my beating 
heart. 

Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and 
we went up to his room (top story but one), and cried very 
much. He solemnly conjured me, [remember, to take warn- 
ing by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty 
pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds 
nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy; but that 
if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After 
which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, gave me a 
written order on Mrs. Micawber for the amount, and put 
away his pocket-handkerchicf and cheered up. 

We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the 
rusted grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too 
many coals, until another debtor, who shared the room with 
Mr. Micawber, came in from the bakehouse with the loin of 
mutton which was our joint-stock repast:- Then I was sent 
up to ‘‘Captain Hopkins’’ in the room overhead, with Mr. 
Micawber’s compliments, and I was his young friend, and 
would Captain Hopkins lend me a knife and fork? 

Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his 


202 Works of Charles Dickens 

compliments to Mr. Micawber. There was a very dirty lady 
in his little room, and two wan girls, his daughters, with 
shock heads of hair. I thought it was better to borrow Cap- 
tain Hopkins’s knife and fork than Captain Hopkins’s comb. 
The captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, 
with large whiskers, and an old, old brown greatcoat with 
no other coat below it. I saw his bed rolled up in a corner, 
and what plates and dishes and pots he had, on a shelf; and 
I divined (God knows how) that though the two girls with 
the shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins’s children, 
the dirty lady was not married to Captain Hopkins. My 
timid station on his threshold was not occupied more than 
a couple of minutes at most; but I came down again with 
all this in my knowledge, as surely as the knife and fork 
were in my hand. 

There was something gypsy-like and agreeable in the 
dinner, after all. 1 took back Captain Hopkins’s knife and 
fork early in the afternoon, and went home to comfort Mrs. 
Micawber with an account of my visit. She fainted when 
she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot after- 
ward to console us while we talked it over. 

IT don’t know how the household furniture came to be sold 
for the family benefit, or who sold it, except that,Z did not. 
Sold it was, however, and carried away in a van; except the 
beds, a few chairs, and the kitchen table. With these pos- 
sessions we encamped, as it were, in the two parlors of the 
emptied house in Windsor Terrace—Mrs. Micawber, the 
children, the Orfling, and myself—and lived in those rooms 
night and day. I have no idea for how long, though it 
seems to me for a long time. At last Mrs. Micawber re- 
solved to move into the prison where Mr. Micawber had 
now secured a room to himself. So I took the key of the 
house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it, and the 
beds were sent over to the King’s Bench, except mine, for 
which a little room was hired outside the walls in the neigh- 
borhood of that institution, very much to my satisfaction, 
since the Micawbers and I had become too used to one an- 


David Copperfield 203 


other, in our troubles, to part. The Orfling was likewise 
accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same 
neighborhood. Mine was a quiet back-garret with a slop- 
ing roof, commanding a pleasant prospect of a timber-yard; 
and when I took possession of it, with the reflection that Mr. 
Micawber’s troubles had come to a crisis at last, I thought it 
quite a paradise. 

All this time I was working at Murdstone & Grinby’s, 
in the same common way, and with the same common com- 
panions, and with the same sense of unmerited degradation 
as at first. But I never, happily for me no doubt, made a 
single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom 
I saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, 
and in prowling about the streets at meal-times. I led the 
same secretly unhappy life; but I led it in the same lonely, 
self-reliant manner. The only changes I am conscious of 
are, first, that I had grown more shabby, and secondly, that 
I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs, 
Micawber’s cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged 
to help them at their present pass, and they lived more com- 
fortably in the prison than they had lived for a long while 
out of it. I used to breakfast with them now, in virtue of 
some arrangement, of which I have forgotten the details. I 
forget, too, at what hour the gates were open in the morning, 
admitting of my going in; but I know that I was often up 
at six o’clock, and that my favorite lounging-place, in the 
interval, was old London Bridge, where I was wont to sit 
in one of the stone recesses, watching the people going by, 
or to look over the balustrades at the sun shining in the 
water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the 
Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told 
some astonishing fictions respecting the wharfs and the 
Tower; of which I can say no more than that I hope I be- 
lieved them myself. In the evening I used to go back to 
the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr. 
Micawber, or play casino with Mrs. Micawber, and hear 
reminiscences of her papa and mama, Whether Mr. Murd- 


204 Works of Charles Dickens 


stone knew where I was, I am unable to say. I never told 
them at Murdstone & Grinby’s. — 

Mr. Micawber’s affairs, although past their crisis, were 
very much involved by reason of a certain ‘‘Deed,’’ of which 
I used to hear a great deal, and which I suppose now to 
have been some former composition with his creditors, though 
I was so far from being clear about it then, that I am con- 
scious of having confounded it with those demoniacal parch- 
ments which are held to have, once upon a time, obtained 
to a great extent in Germany. At last this document ap- 
peared to be got out of the way, somehow; at all events, it 
ceased to be the rock ahead it had been; and Mrs. Micawber 
informed me that ‘‘her family’? had decided that Mr. Micaw- 
ber should apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors’ 
Act, which would set him free, she expected, in about six 
weeks. 

‘‘And then,’’ said Mr. Micawber, who was present, ‘‘I 
have no doubt | shall, please Heaven, begin to be beforehand 
with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if— 
in short, if anything turns up.’’ 

By way of going in for anything that might be on the 
cards, I call to mind that Mr. Micawber, about this time, 
composed a petition to the House of Commons, praying for 
an alteration in the law of imprisonment for debt. I set: 
down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to 
myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my 
altered life, and made stories for myself, out of the streets, 
and out of men and women; and how some main points in 
the character I shall unconsciously develop, I suppose, in 
writing my life, were gradually forming all this while. 

There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, 
as a gentleman, was a great authority. Mr. Micawber had 
stated his idea of this petition to the club, and the club had 
strongly approved of the same. Wherefore Mr. Micawber 
(who was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a 
creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, 
and never so happy as when he was busy about something 


David @opperfield 205 


that could never be of any profit to him) set to work at the 
petition, invented it, engrossed it on an immense sheet of 
paper, spread it out on a table, and appointed a time for all 
the club, and all within the walls if they chose, to come up 
to his room and sign it. | 

When I heard of this approaching ceremony I was so 
anxious to see them all come in, one after another, though 
I knew the greater part of them already, and they me, that 
I got an hour’s leave of absence from Murdstone & Grinby’s, 
and established myself in acorner for that purpose. As many 
of the principal members of the club as could be got into the 
small room without filling it supported Mr. Micawber in 
front of the petition, while my old friend Captain Hopkins 
(who had washed himself, to do honor to so solemn an occa- 
sion) stationed himself close to it, to read it to all who were 
unacquainted with its contents. The door was then thrown 
open, and the general population began to come in, in a long 
file; several waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his 
signature, and went out. To everybody in succession Cap- 
tain Hopkins said: ‘‘Have you read it?’? ‘‘No.’’ ‘* Would 
you like to hear it read?’’ If he weakly showed the least 
disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in a loud, sonorous 
voice, gave him every word of it. The captain would have 
read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people 
would have heard him, one by one. I remember a certain 
luscious roll he gave to such phrases as ‘‘The people’s repre- 
sentatives in Parliament assembled,’’ ‘‘ Your petitioners there- 
fore humbly approach your honorable house,’’ ‘‘ His gracious 
Majesty’s unfortunate subjects,’’ as if the words were some- 
thing real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, 
meanwhile, listening with a little of an author’s vanity, and 
contemplating (not severely) the spikes on the opposite wall. 

As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and 
Blackfriars, and lounged about at meal-times in obscure 
streets, the stones of which may, for anything I know, be 
worn at this moment by my childish feet, 1 wonder how 
inany of these people were wanting in the crowd that used 


206 Works of Charles Dickens 


to come filing before me in review again, to the echo of Cap- 
tain Hopkins’s voice! When my thoughts go back now, to 
that slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the 
histories I invented for such people hangs like a mist of 
fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old 
ground, I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going 
on before me, an innocent, romantic boy, making his imagi- 
native world out of such strange experiences and sordid 
things. 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO BETTER, I FORM 
A GREAT RESOLUTION 


In due time Mr. Micawber’s petition was ripe for hearing; 
and that gentleman was ordered to be discharged under the 
Act, to my great joy. His creditors were not implacable, 
and Mrs. Micawber informed me that even the revengeful 
boot-maker had declared in open court that he bore him no 
malice, but that when money was owing to him he liked to 
be paid. He said he thought it was human nature, 

Mr, Micawber returned to the King’s Bench when his case 
was over, aS some fees were to be settled, and some formali- 
ties observed, before he could be actually released. The club 
received him with transport, and held a harmonic meeting 
that evening in his honor; while Mrs. Micawber and I had 
a lamb’s fry in private, surrounded by the sleeping family.” 

*‘On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copper- 
field,’? said Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘in a little more flip,’’ for we 
had been having some already, ‘“‘the memory of my papa 
and mama.”’ 

‘*Are they dead, ma’am?”’ I inquired, after drinking the 
toast in a wine-glass. 

‘*My mama departed this life,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘be- 
fore Mr. Micawber’s difficulties commenced, or at least before 


David @opperfield 207 


they became pressing. My papa lived to bail Mr. Micawber 
several times, and then expired, regretted by a numerous 
eircle.”’ | | 

Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear 
upon the twin who happened to be in hand. 

As I could hardly hope for a more favorable opportunity 
of putting a question in which | had a near interest, I said 
to Mrs. Micawber: 

*“May | ask, ma’am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend 
to do, now that Mr. Micawber is out of difficulties and at 
liberty? Have you settled yet?”’ 

““My family,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those 
two words with an air, though I never could discover who 
came under the denomination, ‘‘my family are of opinion 
that Mr. Micawber should quit London, and exert his talents 
in the country. Mr. Micawber is a manof great talent, Mas- 
ter Copperfield.’’ 

I said I was sure of that. 

“Of great talent,’’ repeated Mrs. Micawber. ‘‘My family 
are of opinion that, with a little interest, something might 
be done for a man of his ability in the Custom House. The 
influence of my family being local, it is their wish that Mr. 
Micawber should go down to Plymouth. They think it 
‘indispensable that he should be upon the spot.’”’ 

‘*That he may be ready?’’ I suggested. 

‘“*Eixactly,’’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘‘That he may be 
ready—in case of anything turning up.”’ 

**And do you go too, ma’am?”’ 

The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if 
not with the-flip, had made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she 
shed tears as she replied: 

‘1 never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may 
have concealed his difficulties from me in the first instance, 
but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect that he 
would overcome them. The pearl necklace and bracelets 
which I inherited from mama have been disposed of for less 
than half their value, and the set of coral, which was the 


208 Works of @harles Diekens 


wedding gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away 
for nothing. But I never will desert Mr. Micawber. No!’’ 
cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than before, ‘‘l never will 
doit! It’s of no use asking me!’’ | 

I felt quite uncomfortable—as if Mrs. Micawber supposed 
I had asked her to do anything of the sort!—and sat looking 
at her in alarm. 

‘‘Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not deny that he is 
improvident. I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark 
as to his resources and his liabilities, both,’’ she went on, 
looking at the wall; ‘‘but 1 never will desert Mr. Micawber!’’ 

Mrs. Micawber having now raised her’voice into a perfect 
scream, I was so frightened that 1 ran off to the club-room, 
and disturbed Mr. Micawber in the act of presiding at a long 
table, and leading the chorus of — 

Gee up, Dobbin, 

Gee ho, Dobbin, 

Gee up, Dobbin, 

Gee up, and gee ho—o—o! 
—with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming 
state; upon which he immediately burst into tears, and came 
away with me with his waistcoat full of the heads and tails 
of shrimps, of which he had been partaking. 

‘‘Kmma, my angel!’ cried Mr. Micawber, running into 
the room; ‘‘what is the matter?’’ 

‘‘T never will desert you, Micawber!’’ she exclaimed: 

‘*My life!’ said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms, 
‘‘T am perfectly aware of it.”’ 

‘‘He is the parent of my children! He is the father 
of my twins! He is the husband of my affections,’ cried 
Mrs. Micawber, struggling; ‘‘and 1 ne—ver—will desert Mr. 
Micawber!’’ 

Mr. Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her 
devotion (as to me, 1 was dissolved in tears) that he hung 
over her in a passionate manner, imploring her to look up, 
and to be calm. But the more he asked Mrs. Micawber to 
look up, the more she fixed her eyes on nothing, and the more 


David Gopperfield 209 


he asked -her to compose herself, the more she wouldn’t. 
Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome that he 
mingled his tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to 
do him the favor of taking a chair on the staircase while he 
got her into bed. 1 would have taken my leave for the night, 
but he would not hear of my doing that until the strangers’ 
bell should ring. So 1 sat at the staircase window until he 
came out with another chair and joined me. 

‘How is Mrs. Micawber now, sir?”’ I said. 

““Very low,’’ said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; ‘‘re- 
action. Ah, this has been a dreadful day! We stand alone 
now—everything is gone from us!”’ 

Mr. Micawber pressed my hand, and groaned, and after- 
ward shed tears. I was greatly touched, and disappointed 
too, for I had expected that we should be quite gay on this 
happy and Jong-looked-for occasion. But Mr. and Mrs. Mi- 
cawber were so used to their old difficulties, I think, that 
they felt quite shipwrecked when they came to consider that 
they were released from them. All their elasticity was’ de- 
parted, and I never saw them half so wretched as on this 
night; insomuch that when the bell rang and Mr. Micawber 
walked with me to the lodge, and parted from me there with | 
a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he was 
so profoundly miserable. 

But through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in 
which we had been, so unexpectedly to me, involved, I 
plainly discerned that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber and their 
family were going away from London, and that a parting 
between us was near at hand. It was in my walk home that 
night, and in the sleepless hours which followed when I lay 
in bed, that the thought first occurred to me—though | don’t 
know how it came into my head—which afterward shaped 
itself into a settled resolution. 

1 had grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers, and 
had been so intimate with them in their distresses, and was 
so utterly friendless without them, that the prospect of being 
thrown upon some new shift for a lodging, and going once 


210 Works of Charles Dickens 


more among unknown people, was like being that moment 
turned adrift into my present life, with such a knowledge 
of it ready made as experience had given me. All the sen- 
sitive feelings it wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery 
it kept alive within my breast, became more poignant as I 
thought of this, and I determined that the life was unendurable. 

That there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape 
was my own act, | knew quite well. Irarely heard from Miss 
Murdstone, and never from Mr. Murdstone; but two or three 
parcels of made or mended clothes had come up for me, con- 
signed to Mr. Quinion, and in each there was a scrap of 
paper to the effect that J. M. trusted D. C. was applying 
himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to his duties 
—not the least hint of my ever being anything else than the 
coinmon drudge into which I was fast settling down. 

The very next day showed me, while my mind was in the 
first agitation of what it had conceived, that Mrs. Micawber 
had not spoken of their going away without warrant. They 
took a lodging.in the house where I lived, for a week; at 
the expiration of which time they were to start for Plymouth. 
Mr. Micawber himself came down to the counting-house, in 
the afternoon, to tell Mr. Quinion that he must relinquish 
me, on the day of his departure, and to give me a high char- 
acter, which I am sureI deserved. And Mr. Quinion, calling 
in Tipp the carman, who was a married man, and had a room 
to let, quartered me prospectively on him—by our mutual 
consent, as he had every reason to think; but I said nothing, 
though my resolution was now taken. 

I passed my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during 
the remaining term of our residence under the same roof; 
and J think we became fonder of one another as the time 
went on. On the last Sunday, they invited me to dinner, 
and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding. 
I had bought a spotted wooden horse over-night as a parting 
gift to little Wilkins Micawber—that was the boy—and a 
doll for little Emma. I had also kestowed a shilling on the 
Orfling, who was about to be disbanded. 


David @opperfield 211 


We had a very pleasant day, though we were all in a 
tender state about our approaching separation. 

“‘T shall never, Master Copperfield,’’ said Mrs, Micawber, 
‘revert to the period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties 
without thinking of you. Your conduct has always been of 
the most delicate and obliging description. You have never 
been a lodger. You have been a friend.’’ 

‘*My dear,’’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘‘Copperfield,’’ for so he 
had been accustomed to call me of late, ‘‘has a heart to feel 
for the distresses of his fellow-creatures when they are behind 
a cloud, and a head to plan, and a hand to—in short, a gen- 
eral ability to dispose of such available property as could be 
made away with.”’ 

I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I 
was very sorry we were going to lose one another. 

‘‘My dear young friend,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘I am 
older than you; a man of some experience in life, and—and 
of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speak- 
ing. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, 
1 may say, hourly expecting), 1 have nothing to bestow but 
advice. Still, my advice is so far worth taking that—in short, 
that I have never taken it myself, and am the’’—here Mr. 
Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his 
head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself 
and frowned—‘‘the miserable wretch you behold.”’ 

‘‘My dear Micawber!’’ urged his wife. 

“‘T say,’’? returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting him- 
self, and smiling again, ‘“‘the miserable wretch you behold. 
My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do to-day. 
Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him.”’ 

**My poor papa’s maxim,’’ Mrs. Micawber observed. 

‘“‘My dear,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘“‘your papa was very 
well in his way, and Heaven forbid that I should disparage 
him. Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall—in short, 
make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, 
at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to read 
the same description of print without spectacles. But he 


212 Works of Charles Diekens 


applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was 
so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that I never 
recovered the expense.’’ ‘ 

Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added: 
‘‘Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.”’ 
After which he was grave for a minute or so. 

‘‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’? said Mr. Mi- 
cawber, ‘‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual 
expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual 
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds 
aught and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the 
leaf is withered, the God of day goes down upon the dreary 
scene, and—and in short, you are forever floored. As 
IT am!”’ 

To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber 
drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and 
satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe. 

I did not fail to assure him that 1 would store these pre- 
cepts in my mind, though indeed I had no need to do so; for, 
at the time, they affected me visibly. Next morning 1 met 
the whole family at the coach-office, and saw them, with a 
desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back. 

‘‘Master Copperfield,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘God bless 
you! J] never can forget all that, you know, and I never 
would if 1 could.’’ 

‘*Copperfield,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘farewell! Every 
happiness and prosperity! If, in the progress of revolving 
years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny had 
been a warning to you, | should feel that I had not occupied 
another man’s place in existence altogether in vain. In case 
of anything turning up (of which 1 am rather confident), I 
shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to im- 
prove your prospects.”’ 

I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, 
with the children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully 
at them, a mist cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a 
little creature 1 really was. I think so, because she beckoned 


David Copperfield 213 


to me to climb up, with quite a new and motherly expression 
in her face, and put her arm around my neck and gave me 
just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. 1 
had barely time to get down again before the coach started, 
and I could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they 
waved. It was gone in a minute. The Orfling and I stood 
looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the road, and 
then shook hands and said good-by; she going back, I suppose, 
to St Luke’s workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day 
at Murdstone & Grinby’s. 

But with no intention of passing many more weary days 
there. No. Ihad resolved to run away.—To go, by some 
means or other, down into the country, to the only relation 
I had in the world, and tell my story to my aunt, Miss 
Betsey. 

I have already observed that I don’t know how this des- 
perate idea came into my brain. But once there, it remained 
there; and hardened into a purpose than which I have never 
entertained a more determined purpose in my life. I am far 
from sure that 1 believed there was anything hopeful in it, 
but my mind was thoroughly made up that it must be carried 
into execution. 

Again, and again, and a hundred times again, since the 
night when the thought had first occurred to me and banished 
. sleep, 1 had gone over that old story of my poor mother’s 
about my birth, which it had been one of my great delights 
in the old time to hear her tell, and which I knew by heart. 
My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it, a dread 
and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her 
behavior which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some 
faint shadow of encouragement. 1 could not forget how my 
mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair 
with no ungentle hand; and though it might have been alto- 
gether my mother’s fancy, and might have had no foundation 
whatever in fact, 1 made a little picture out of it—of my ter- 
rible aunt relenting toward the girlish beauty that I recol- 
lected so well, and loved so much—which softened the whole 


214 Works of Charles Dickens 


narrative. It is very possible that it had been in my mind a 
long time, and had gradually engendered my determination. 

As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote 
a long letter to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she 
remembered; pretending that 1 had heard of such a lady 
living at a certain place I named at random, and had a curi- 
osity to know if it were the same. In the course of that 
letter, I told Peggotty that I had a particular occasion for 
half a guinea, and that if she could lend me that sum until 
I could repay it, 1 should be very much obliged to her, and 
would tell her afterward what 1 had wanted it for. 

Peggotty’s answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of 
affectionate devotion. She inclosed the half guinea (I was 
afraid she must have had a world of trouble to get it out of 
Mr. Barkis’s box), and told me that Miss Betsey lived near 
Dover; but whether at Dover itself, at Hythe, Sandgate, or 
Folkestone, she could not say. One of our men, however, 
informing me, on my asking him about these places, that. 
they were all close together, I deemed this enough for my 
object, and resolved to set out at the end of that week. 

Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to dis- 
grace the memory I was going to leave behind me at Murd- 
stone & Grinby’s, I considered myself bound to remain until 
Saturday night; and, as I had been paid a week’s wages in 
advance when I first came there, not to present myself in the 
counting-house at the usual hour to receive my stipend. For 
this express reason, [ had borrowed the half-guinea, that I 
might not be without a fund for my traveling expenses. Ac- 
cordingly, when the Saturday night came, and we were all 
waiting in the warehouse to be paid, and Tipp, the carman, 
who always took precedence, went in first to draw his money, 
1 shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him, when it came 
to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that 1 had gone 
to move my box to Tipp’s, and, bidding a last good-night to 
Mealy Potatoes, ran away. 

My box was at my old lodging over the water, and I had 
written a direction for it on the back of one of our address 


David Copperfield 215 


eards that we nailed on the casks: ‘‘Master David, to be left 
till called for at the coach-office, Dover.’’ This I had in my 
pocket ready to put on the box, after I should have got it out 
of the house; and as I went toward my lodging I looked 
about me for some one who would help me to carry it to the 
booking-office. 

There was a long-legged young man with a very little 
empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk, in the Black- 
friars Road, whose eye I caught as I was going by, and who, 
addressing me as ‘‘Sixpenn’orth of bad ha’pence,’’ hoped ‘‘I 
should know him agin to swear to’’—in allusion, 1 have no 
doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I 
had not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he 
might or might not like a job. 

*“Wot job?”’ said the long-legged young man. 

*“T’o move a box,’’ I answered. 

‘*Wot box?’’ said the long-legged young man. 

I told him mine, which was down that street there, and 
which I wanted him to take to the Dover coach-office for 
sixpence. 

- “Done with you for a tanner!”’ said the long-legged young 
man, and directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but 
a large wooden tray on wheels, and rattled away at such a 
rate that it was as much as | could do to keep pace with the 
donkey. ; 

There was a defiant manner about this young man, and 
particularly about the way in which he chewed straw as he 
spoke to me, which I did not much like; as the bargain was 
made, however, 1 took him upstairs to the room I was leay- 
ing, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart. 
Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there, lest 
any of my landlord’s family should fathom what I was doing, 
and detain me; sol said to the young man that I would be 
glad if he would stop for a minute, when he came to the 
dead-wall of the King’s Bench prison. The words were no 
sooner out of my mouth than he rattled away, as if he, my 
box, the cart, and the donkey were all equally mad; and [ 


216 Works of Charles Diekens 


was quite out of breath with running and calling after him, 
when I caught him at the place appointed. ! 

Being much flushed and excited I tumbled my half-guinea 
out of my pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my 
mouth for safety, and though my hands trembled a good deal, 
had just tied the card on very much to my satisfaction, when 
1 felt myself violently chucked under the chin by the long- 
legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my 
mouth into his hand. 

‘‘Wot!’’ said the young man, seizing me by the jacket 
collar, with a frightful grin. ‘‘This is a pollis case, is it? 
You’re a-going to bolt, are you? Come to the pollis, you 
young warmin, come to the pollis!’’ | 

‘‘You give me my money back, if you please,’’ said I, 
very much frightened; ‘‘and leave me alone.’’ 

‘‘Come to the pollis!”’ said the young man. ‘‘You shall 
prove it your’n to the pollis.”’ ( 

‘‘Give me my box and money, will you?’’ I cried, burst- 
ing into tears. 

The young man still replied: ‘‘Come to the pollis!’’? and 
was dragging me against the donkey in a violent manner, 
as if there were any affinity between that animal and a magis- 
trate, when he changed his mind, jumped into the cart, sat 
upon my box, and exclaiming that he would drive to the 
pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever. 

T ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to 
call out with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if 
I had. I narrowly escaped being run over, twenty times at 
least, in half a mile. Now 1 lost him, now I saw him, now 
I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip, now shouted at, 
now down in the mud, now up again, now running into 
somebody’s arms, now running headlong at a post. At 
length, confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether 
half London might not by this time be turning out for my 
apprehension, I left the young man to go where he would 
with my box and money, and, panting and crying, but never 
stopping. faced about for Greenwich, which 1 had understood 


David Gopperfield ge 217 


was on the Dover Road; taking very little more out of the 
world, toward the retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I 
had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her 
so much umbrage. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION 


For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of 
running all the way to Dover, when 1 gave up the pursuit 
_ of the young man with the donkey-cart, and started for 
Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon collected as to 
that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent Road, 
at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great fool- 
ish image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat 
down on a doorstep, quite spent and exhausted with the 
efforts 1 had already made, and with hardly breath enough 
to ery for the loss of my box and half-guinea. 

It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, 
as 1 sat resting. Butit was a summer night, fortunately, 
and fine weather. When I had recovered my breath, and 
had got rid of a stifling sensation in my throat, I rose up and 
went on. In the midst of my distress I had no notion of 
going back. I doubt if I should have had any, though there 
had been a Swiss snowdrift in the Kent Road. 

) But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the 

world (and I am sure I wonder how they came to be left in 
my pocket on a Saturday night!) troubled me none the less 
because I went on. I began to picture to myself, as a scrap 
of newspaper intelligence, my being found dead in a day or 
two, under some hedge; and I trudged on miserably, though 
as fast as I could, until I happened to pass a little shop,. 
where it was written up that ladies’ and gentlemen’s ward- 
robes were bought, and that the best price was given for 


218 Works of Charles Diekens 


rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The master of this shop was 
sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and as there 
were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from 
the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside 
to show what they were, I fancied that he looked like a man 
of a revengeful disposition, who had hanged os his enemies, 
and was enjoying himself. 

My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber sug- 
gested to me that here might be a means of keeping off the 
wolf for a little while. I went up the next by-street, took off 
my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my arm, and came back 
to the shop door. ‘‘lf you please, sir,’’ I said, ‘‘I am to sell 
this for a fair price.’’ 

Mr. Dolloby—Dolloby was the name over the shop-door, 
at least—took the waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head against 
the door-post, went into the shop, followed by me, snuffed the 
two candles with his fingers, spread the waistcoat on the 
counter, and looked at it there, held it up against the light, 
and looked at it there, and ultimately said: 

‘‘What do you call a price, now, for this here little 
weskit?”’ 

“Oh! you know best, sir,’’ I returned, modestly. 

‘*T can’t be buyer and seller, too,’’? said Mr. Dolloby. 
‘*Put a price on this here little weskit.”’ 

‘Would eighteenpence be’’—I hinted, after some hesita- 
tion. Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back. 
‘*] should rob my family,’’ he said, ‘‘if 1 was to offer nine- 
pence for it.”’ 

This was a disagreeable way of putting the business, be- 
cause it imposed upon me, a perfect stranger, the unpleasant- 
ness of asking Mr. Dolloby to rob his family on my account. 
My circumstances being so very pressing, however, | said I 
would take ninepence for it, if he pleased. Mr. Dolloby, not 
without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I wished him 
good-night, and walked out of the shop, the richer by that 
sum, and the poorer by a waistcoat. But when I buttoned 
my jacket, that was not much. 


David Gopperfield 219 


Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go 
next, and that I should have to make the best of my way to 
Dover in a shirt and a pair of trousers, and might deem my- 
self lucky if I got there even in that trim. But my mind did 
not run so much on this as might be supposed. Beyond a 
general impression of the distance before me, and of the young 
man with the donkey-cart having used me cruelly, I think I 
had no very urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again 
set off with my ninepence in my pocket. 

A. plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which I 
was going tocarry intoexecution. This was, tolie behind the 
wall at the back of my old school, in a corner where there 
used to be a haystack. I imagined it would be a kind of 
company to have the boys, and the bedroom where I used to 
* tell the stories, so near me, although the boys would know 
nothing of my being there, and the bedroom would yield me 
no shelter. 

I had had a hard day’s work, and was pretty well jaded 
when I came climbing out, at last, upon the level of Black- 
heath. It cost me some trouble to find out Salem House; but 
I found it, and I found a haystack in the corner, and I lay 
down by it, having first walked round the wall, and looked 
’ up at the windows, and seen that all was dark and silent 
within. Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first 
lying down, without a roof above my head! 

Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, 
against whom house doors were locked, and house - dogs 
barked, that night—and I dreamed of lying on my old 
school-bed, talking to the boys in my room, and found my- 
self sitting upright, with Steerforth’s name upon my lips, 
looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmer- 
ing above me. When I remembered where | was at that 
untimely hour, a feeling stole upon me that made me get up, 
afraid of 1 don’t know what, and walk about. But the fainter 
glimmering of the stars, and the pale light in the sky where | 
the day was coming, reassured me; and my eyes being very 
heavy, I lay down again, and slept—though with a knowl- 


220 Works of Charles Dickens 


edge in my sleep that it was cold—until the warm beams of 
the sun, and the ringing of the getting-up bell at Salem 
House, awoke me. If 1 could have hoped that Steerforth 
was there 1 would have lurked about until he came out alone; 
but I knew he must have left long since. Traddies still re- 
mained, perhaps, but it was very doubtful; and I had not 
sufficient confidence in his discretion or good luck, however 
strong my reliance was on his good-nature, to wish to trust 
him with my situation. So 1 crept away from the wall as 
Mr. Creakle’s boys were getting up, and struck into the long 
dusty track which I had first known to be the Dover Road 
when I was one of them, and when [| little expected that any 
eyes would ever see me the wayfarer I was now, upon it. 
What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday 


morning at Yarmouth! In due time I heard the church-bells © 


ringing, as I plodded on; and I met people who were going 
to church, and I passed a church or two where the congrega- 
tion were inside, and the sound of singing came out into the 
sunshine, while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade 
of the porch, or stood beneath the yew-tree, with his hand 
to his forehead, glowering at me going by. But the peace 
and rest of the old Sunday morning were on everything, 
except me. That was the difference. I felt quite wicked 
in my dirt and dust, and with my tangled hair. But for 
the quiet picture I had conjured up, of my mother in her 
youth and beauty, weeping by the fire, and my aunt relent- 
ing to her, I hardly think I should have had courage to go 
on until next day. But it always went before me, and l 
followed. 

I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on 
the straight road, though not very easily, for 1 was new to 
that kind of toil. I see myself, as evening closes in, coming 
over the bridge at Rochester, footsore and tired, and eating 
bread that I had bought for supper. One or two little houses, 
with the notice, ‘‘ Lodgings for Travelers,’’ hanging out, had 
tempted me, but I was afraid of spending the few pence I 
had, and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the 


- 


David Gopperfield 221 


trampers I had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, there- 
fore, but the sky: and toiling into Chatham—which, in that 
night’s aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, 
and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah’s arks 
—crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhang- 
ing a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I 
lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the 
sentry’s footsteps, though he knew no more of my being 
above him than the boys at Salem House had known of my 
lying by the wall, slept soundly until morning. 

Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite 
dazed by the beating of drums and marching of troops, which 
seemed to hem me in on every side when I went down toward 
the long narrow street. Feeling that I could go but a very 
little way that day, if 1 were to reserve any strength for get- 
ting to my journey’s end, I resolved to make the sale of my 
jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket 
off, that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under 
my arm, began a tour of inspection of the various slopshops. 

It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in 
second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally 
speaking, on the lookout for customers at their shop-doors. 
But, as most of them had, hanging up among their stock, 
an officer’s coat or two, epaulettes and all, I was rendered 
timid by the costly nature of their dealings, and walked 
about for a long time without offering my merchandise to 
any one. 

This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine- 
store shops, and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s, in preference to 
the regular dealers. At last I found one that I thought looked 
promising, at the corner of a dirty lane, ending in an inclosure 
full of stinging nettles, against the palings of which some 
second-hand sailors’ clothes, that seemed to have overflowed 
the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns, 
and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty 
keys of so many sizes that they seemed various enough to 
open all the doors in the world. 


222 Works of Charles Dickens 


Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was 
darkened rather than lighted by a little window, overhung 
with clothes, and was descended into by some steps, I went 
with palpitating heart; which was not relieved when an 
ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all covered 
with a stubbly gray beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind 
it, and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful 
old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling 
terribly of rum. His bedstead, covered with a tumbled and 
ragged piece of patchwork, was in the den he had come 
from, where another little window showed a prospect of more 
stinging nettles and a lame donkey. 

‘‘Oh, what do you want?”’ grinned this old man, in a 
fierce, monotonous whine. ‘‘Oh, my eyes and limbs, what 
do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? 
Oh, goroo, goroo!”’ 

I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly 
by the repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind 
of rattle in his throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon 
the old man, still holding me by the hair, repeated: 

“Oh, what do you want? Oh, my eyes and limbs, what 
do you want? Oh, my lungs and livér, what do you want? 
Oh, goroo!’’ which he screwed out of himself, with an energy 
that made his eyes start in his head. 

‘**T wanted to know,’’ I said, trembling, “‘if you would buy 
a jacket.”’ 

‘*Oh, let’s see the jacket!”’ cried the old man. ‘*Oh, my 
heart on fire, show the jacket to us! Oh, my eyes and limbs, 
bring the jacket out!’ 

With that he took his trembling hands, which were like 
the claws of a great bird, out of my hair, and put on a pair 
of spectacles, not at all ornamental to his inflamed eyes. 

‘*Oh, how much for the jacket?’’ cried the old man, after 
examining it. ‘‘Oh—goroo!—how much for the jacket?’’ 

‘* Half-a-crown,’’ I answered, recovering myself. 

“‘Oh, my lungs and liver,’’ cried the old man, ‘‘no! Oh, 
my eyes, no! Oh, my limbs, no! Eighteenpence. Goroo!’’ 


David Copperfield 223 


Kvery time he uttered this ejaculation his eyes seemed to 
be in danger of starting out; and every sentence he spoke he 
delivered in a sort of tune, always exactly the same, and 
more like a gust of wind, which begins low, mounts up 
high, and falls again, than any other comparison I can find 
for it. 13 

‘**Well,’’ said I, glad to have ciosed the bargain, ‘‘I’ll take 
eighteenpence.’’ 

**Oh, my liver!’ cried the old man, throwing the jacket 
on a shelf. ‘‘Get out of the shop! Oh, my lungs, get out 
of the shop! Oh, my eyes and limbs—goroo!—don’t ask for 
money—make it an exchange.”’ 

I never was so frightened in my life, before or since; but 
I told him humbly that | wanted money, and that nothing 
else was of any use to me, but that I would wait for it, as 
he desired, outside, and had no wish to hurry him. So I 
went outside, and sat down in the shade in acorner. And 
I sat there so many hours that the shade became sunlight, 
and the sunlight became shade again, and still 1 sat there 
waiting for the money. 

There never was such another drunken madman in that 
line of business, I hope. That he was well known in the 
neighborhood, and enjoyed the reputation of having sold 
himself to the devil, I soon understood from the visits he 
received from the boys, who continually came skirmishing 
about the shop, shouting that legend, and calling to him to 
bring out his gold. ‘‘ You ain’t poor, you know, Charley, as 
you pretend. Bring out your gold. Bring out some of the 
gold you sold yourself to the devil for. Come! It’s in the 
lining of the mattress, Charley. Rip it open and let’s have 
some!’” This, and many offers to lend him a knife for the 
purpose, exasperated him to such a degree that the whole day 
was a succession of rushes on his part and flights on the part 
of the boys. Sometimes in his rage he would take me for 
one of them, and come at me, mouthing as if he were going: 
to tear me in pieces; then, remembering me, just in time, 
would dive into the shop, and lie upon his bed, as I thought 


224 Works of Charles Dickens 


from the sound of his voice, yelling in a frantic way, to his 
own windy tune, the Death of Nelson; with an Oh! before 
every line, and innumerable Goroos interspersed. As if this 
were not bad enough for me, the boys, connecting me with 
the establishment, on account of the patience and persever- 
ance with which I sat outside, half-dressed, pelted me, and 
used me very ill all day. 

He made many attempts to induce me to consent to an 
exchange, at one time coming out with a fishing rod, at an- 
other with a fiddle, at another with a cocked hat, at another 
with a flute. But JI resisted all these overtures, and sat there 
‘in desperation; each time asking him, with tears in my eyes, 
for my money or my jacket. At last he began to pay me in 
halfpence at a time, and he was full two hours getting by 
easy stages to a shilling. 

**Oh, my eyes and limbs!’’ he then cried, peeping hideously 
out of the shop, after a long pause, ‘‘will you go for twopence 
more?”’ 

‘*T can’t,’’ I said. ‘‘I shall be starved.”’ | 

‘‘Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?”’ 

‘‘T would go for nothing if I could,’’ I said, ‘‘but 1 want 
the money badly.’’ 

“Oh, go—roo!’’ (it is really impossible to express how he 
twisted this ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped round 
the door-post at me, showing nothing but his crafty old 
head); ‘‘will you go for fourpence?”’ 

I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and 
taking the money out of his claw, not without trembling, 
went away more hungry and thirsty than I had ever been, 
a little before sunset. But at an expense of threepence I soon 
refreshed myself completely, and, being in better spirits then, 
limped seven miles upon my road. 

My bed at night was under another haystack, where I 
rested comfortably, after having washed my blistered feet 
‘in a stream, and dressed them as well as 1 was able: with 
some cool leaves. When I took the road again next morn- 
ing, I found that it lay through a succession of hop-grounds 


Dauid Copperfield 225 


and orchards. It was sufficiently late in the year for the 
orchards to be ruddy with ripe apples; and in a few places 
the hop-pickers were already at work. 1 thought it all ex- 
tremely beautiful, and made up my mind to sleep among the 
hops that night; imagining some cheerful companionship in 
the long perspectives of poles, with the graceful leaves twin- 
ing round them. 

The trampers were worse than ever that day, and inspired 
me with a dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind. Some 
of them were most ferocious-looking ruffians, who stared at 
me as 1 went by, and stopped, perhaps, and called after me 
to come back and speak to them; and when I took to my 
heels, stoned me. I recollect one young fellow—a tinker, I 
suppose, from his wallet and brazier—who had a woman with 
him, and who faced about and stared at me thus, and then 
roared to me in such a tremendous voice to come back that 
I halted and looked round. 

‘‘Come here when you’re called,’’ said the tinker, ‘‘or Pll 
rip your young body open.”’ 

1 thought it best to go back. As I drew nearer to them, 
trying to propitiate the tinker by my looks, I observed that 
the woman had a black eye. 

‘“‘Where are you going?’ said the tinker, gripping the 
bosom of my shirt with his blackened hand. 

‘‘T am going to Dover,’’ I said. 

‘‘Where do you come from?”’ asked the tinker, giving his 
hand another turn in my shirt, to hold me more securely. 

‘‘T come from London,”’ I said. 

‘What lay are you upon?’’ asked the tinker. ‘‘Are you 
a prig?”’ 

‘““N—no,’’ | said. 

‘‘ Ain’t you, by G—? If you makea brag of your honesty 
to me,”’ said the tinker, ‘‘I’1l knock your brains out.”’ 

With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking 
me, and then looked at me from head to foot. 

‘‘Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?”’ said 
the tinker. ‘‘If you have, out with it, afore 1 take it away!”’ 

Ort, TI—(8) 


226 Works of Charles Dickens 


I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the 
woman’s look, and saw her very slightly shake her head and 
form ‘‘No!’’ with her lips. 

“‘T am very poor,”’ | said, attempting to smile, ‘‘and have 
got no money.”’ 

‘‘Why, what do you mean?” said the tinker, looking so 
sternly at me that I almost feared he saw the money in my 
pocket. 

“‘Sir!’’ T stammered. . 

**What do you mean,’’ said the tinker, ‘‘by wearing my 
brother’s silk handkercher? Give it over here!’’? And he 
had mine off my neck in a moment, and tossed it to the 
woman. : 

The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought 
this a joke, and tossed it back to me, nodded once, as slightly 
as before, and made the word ‘‘Go!’’ with her lips. Before 
I could obey, however, the tinker seized the handkerchief out 
of my hand with a roughness that threw me away like a 
feather, and putting it loosely round his own neck, turned 
upon the woman with an oath and knocked her down. I 
never shall forget seeing her fall backward on the hard road, 
and lie there with her bonnet tumbled off, and her hair all 
whitened in the dust; nor, when I looked back from a dis- 
lance, seeing her sitting on the pathway, which was a bank 
by the roadside, wiping the blood from her face with a corner 
of her shawl, while he went on ahead. 

This adventure frightened me so, that afterward, when 
I saw any of these people coming, I turned back until I could 
find a hiding-place, where I remained until they had gone 
out of sight; which happened so often that I was very se- 
riously delayed. But under this difficulty, as under all the 
other difficulties of my journey, I seemed to be sustained and 
led on by my fanciful picture of my mother in her youth, 
before I came into the world. It always kept me company. 
It was there, among the hops, when I lay down to sleep; it 
was with me on my waking in the morning; it went before 
me all day. I have associated it, ever since, with the sunny 


David Qopperfield 227 


street of Canterbury, dozing as it were in the hot light; and 
with the sight of its old houses and gateways, and the stately, 
gray Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers. 
When I came, at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, 
it relieved the solitary aspect of the scene with hope; and 
not until [ reached that first great aim of my journey, and 
actually set foot in the town itself, on the sixth day of my 
flight, did it desert me. But then, strange to say, when 
1 stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburned, 
half-clothed figure in the place so long desired, it seemed - 
to vanish like a dream, and to leave me helpless and dis- 
pirited. 

I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and 
received various answers. One said. she lived in the South 
Foreland Light, and had singed her whiskers by doing so; 
another, that she was made fast to the great buoy outside 
the harbor, and could only be visited at half-tide; a third, 
that she was locked up in Maidstone Jail for child-stealing; 
a fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom, in the last 
high wind, and make direct for Calais. The fly-drivers, 
among whom [ inquired next, were equally jocose and equally 
disrespectful; and the shopkeepers, not liking my appearance, 
generally replied, without hearing what I had to say, that 
they had got nothing for me. I felt more miserable and 
destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. 
My money was all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; 1 
was hungry, thirsty, and worn out; and seemed as distant 
from my end as if 1 had remained in London. 

The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I 
was sitting on the step of an empty shop at a street corner, 
near the market-place, deliberating upon wandering toward 
those other places which had been mentioned, when a fly- 
driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a horsecloth. 
Something good-natured in the man’s face, as I handed it 
up, encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss 
Trotwood lived, though I had asked the question so often that 
it almost died upon my lips. 


228 Works of Charies Dickens 


‘*Trotwood,’’ said he. ‘‘Let me see. I know the name, 
too. Old lady?’’ 

‘*Ves,’’ I said, ‘‘rather.”’ 

‘‘Pretty stiff in the back?’’ said he, making himself 
upright. 

“Yes,”? Lsaid. ‘1 should think it very likely.” 

‘Carries a bag?’’ said he—‘‘bag with a good deal of room 
in it—is gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?”’ 

My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the un- 
‘ doubted accuracy of this description. 

‘Why, then, I tell you what,’’ said he. ‘“‘If you go up 
there,’’ pointing with his whip toward the heights, ‘‘and keep > 
right on till you come to some houses facing the sea, I think 
you'll hear of her. My opinion is, she won’t stand anything, 
so here’s a penny for you.”’ 

I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. 
Dispatching this refreshment by the way, I went in the di- 
rection my friend had indicated, and walked on a good dis- 
tance without coming to the houses he had mentioned. At 
length I saw some before me, and approaching them, went 
into a little shop (it was what we used to call a general shop 
at home), and inquired if they could have the goodness to tell 
me where Miss Trotwood lived. I addressed myself to a man 
behind the counter, who was weighing some rice for a young 
woman; but the latter, taking the inquiry to herself, turned 
round quickly. 

‘‘My mistress?’’ she said. ‘‘What do you want with her, 
boy ?’’ : 
‘‘T want,’’ 1 replied, ‘‘to speak to her, if you please.’’ 

‘To beg of her, you mean,’’ retorted the damsel. 

‘‘No,’’ 1 said, ‘‘indeed.’? But suddenly remembering 
that in truth 1 came for no other purpose, I held my peace 
in confusion, and felt my face burn. 

My aunt’s handmaid, as I supposed she was from what 
she had said, put her rice in a little basket and walked out 
of the shop, telling me that 1 could follow her, if I wanted 
to know where Miss Trotwood lived. 1 needed no second 


David Copperfield 229 


permission, though I was by this time in such a state of 
consternation and agitation that my legs shook under me. f 
followed the young woman, and we soon came to a very neat 
little cottage with cheerful bow-windows; in front of it a 
small square graveled court or garden full of flowers, care- 
fully tended, and smelling deliciously. 

‘‘This is Miss Trotwood’s,’’? said the young woman. 
‘‘Now you know; and that’s all I have got to say.’? With 
which words she hurried into the house, as if to shake off the 
responsibility of my appearance, and left me standing at the 
garden-gate, looking disconsolately over the top of it toward 
the parlor-window, where a muslin curtain partly undrawn 
in the middle, a large round green screen or fan fastened on 
to the window-sill, a small table, and a great chair, sug- 
gested to me that my aunt might be at that moment seated 
in awful state. 

My shoes were by this time in a woful condition. The 
soles had shed themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers 
had broken and burst until the very shape and form of shoes 
had departed from them. My hat (which had served me for 
a nightcap, too) was so crushed and bent that no old battered 
handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed 
to vie with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, 
grass, and the Kentish soil on which I had slept—and torn, 
besides—might have frightened the birds from my aunt’s 
garden, as I stood at the gate. My hair had known no comb 
or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and hands, 
from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burned 
to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost 
as white with chalk and dust as if I had come out of a lime- 
kiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, 
I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression 
on, my formidable aunt. 

The unbroken stillness of the parlor-window leading me 
to infer, after a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my 
eyes to the window above it, where I saw a florid, pleasant- 
looking gentleman, with a gray head, who shut up one eye 


230 Works of Charles Dickens 


in a grotesque manner, nodded his head at me several times, 
shook it at me as often, laughed, and went away. 

I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much 
the more discomposed by this unexpected behavior that I was 
on the point of slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, 
when there came out. of the house a lady with her handker- 
chief tied over her cap, and a pair of gardening gloves on 
her hands, wearing a gardening pocket like a tollman’s 
apron, and carrying a great knife. 1 knew her immediately 
to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the house 
exactly as my poor mother had so often described her stalk- 
ing up our garden at Blunderstone Rookery. 

‘‘Go away!’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and. 
making a distant chop in the air with her knife. ‘Go 
along! No boys here!”’ 

I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched 
to a corner of her garden, and stooped to dig up some little 
root there. Then, without a scrap of courage, but with a 
great deal of desperation, I went softly in and stood beside 
her, touching her with my finger. 

‘‘Tf you please, ma’am,’’ I began. 

She started and looked up. 

‘*If you please, aunt.”’ 

‘‘Wn?’’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement 
I have never heard approached. 

‘‘Tf you please, aunt, [ am your nephew.”’ 

“Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat flat down in the 
garden-path. 

‘‘Tam David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk— 
where you came, on the night when I was born, and saw 
my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died. 
1 have been slighted, and taught nothing, and thrown upon 
myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run 
away to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have 
walked all the way, and have never slept in a bed since I 
began the journey.’’ Here my self-support gave way all at 
once; and with a movement of my hands, intended to show 


David Gopperfield 231 


her my ragged state, and call it to witness that 1 had suffered 
something, I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose 
had been pent up within me all the week. 

My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder dis- 
charged from her countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at. 
me, until I began.to cry, when she got up in a great hurry, 
collared me, and took me into the parlor. Her first proceed- 
ing there was to unlock a tall press, bring out several bottles, 
and pour some of the contents of each into my mouth. I 
‘think they must have been taken out at random, for I am 
sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dress- 
ing. When she had administered these restoratives, as I was 
still quite hysterical, and unable to control my sobs, she put 
me on the sofa, with a shawl under my head, and the hand- 
kerchief from her own head under my feet, lest 1 should sully 
the cover; and then, sitting herself down behind the green fan 
or screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her 
face, ejaculated at intervals: ‘‘Mercy on us!’ letting those 
exclamations off like minute guns. 

After a time she rang the bell. ‘‘Janet,’’ said my aunt, 
when her servant came in. ‘‘Go upstairs, give my compli- 
ments to Mr. Dick, and say I wish to speak to him.”’ 

Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on 
the sofa (I was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to 
my aunt) but went on her errand. My aunt, with her hands 
behind her, walked up and down the room until the gentle- 
man who had squinted at me from the upper window came 
in, laughing. 

‘‘Mr. Dick,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘don’t be a fool, because 
nobody can be more discreet than you can, when you choose. 
We all know that. So don’t be a fool, whatever you are.’’ 

‘The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at 
‘me, 1 thought, as if he would entreat me to say nothing 
about the window. 

“Mr. Dick,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘you have heard me mention 
David Copperfield? Now don’t pretend not to have a mem- 
ory, because you and I know better.”’ 


232 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘David Copperfield?”’ said Mr. Dick, who did not appear 
to me toremember much about it. ‘‘ David Copperfield? Oh, 
yes, to be sure, David, certainly.”’ 

‘‘Well,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘this is his boy—his son. He 
would be as like his father as it’s possible to be, if he was 
not so like his mother, too.” 

‘‘His son?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘‘David’s son? Indeed!’’ 

‘‘Yes,’’ pursued my aunt, ‘‘and he has done a pretty piece 
of business. He has run away. Ah! His sister, Betsey 
Trotwood, never would have run away.’’ My aunt shook’ 
her head firmly, confident in the character and behavior of 
the girl who never was born. 

“Oh! you think she wouldn’t have run away?’’ said Mr. 
Dick. 

‘*Bless and save the man,’’ exclaimed my aunt, sharply. 
‘how he talks! Don’t I know she wouldn’t? She would 
have lived with her god-mother, and we should have been 
devoted to one another. Where, in the name of wonder, 
should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?”’ 

‘*Nowhere,’’ said Mr. Dick. | 

‘*Well, then,’’ returned my aunt, softened by the reply, 
‘how can you pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you 
are as sharp as asurgeon’s lancet? Now, here you see young 
David Copperfield, and the question I put to you is, what 
shall I do with him?’’ 

‘*What shall you do with him?’ said Mr. Dick, feebly, 
scratching his head. ‘‘Oh! do with him?”’ 

‘*Yes,”? said my aunt, with a grave look, and her fore- 
finger held up. ‘‘Come! I want some very sound advice.’’ 

‘*Why, if I was you,’’ said Mr. Dick, considering, and 
looking vacantly at me, ‘“‘I should—’’ The contemplation 
of me seemed to inspire him with a sudden idea, and he 
added, briskly, ‘‘I should wash him.’’ 

‘‘Janet,’’ said my aunt, turning round with a quiet 
triumph, which | did not then understand, ‘‘Mr. Dick sets 
us all right. Heat the bath!’’ 

Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could 


David Ropperfield 233 


not help observing my aunt, Mr. Dick, and Janet, while it 
was in progress, and completing a survey I had already been 
engaged in making of the room. 

' My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means 
ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her 
voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account 
for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my 
mother; but her features were rather handsome than other- 
wise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed 
that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was 
gray, was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I be- 
lieve would be called a mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more 
common then than now, with side-pieces fastening under the 
chin. Her dress was of a lavender color, and perfectly neat, 
but scantily made, asif she desired to be as little encumbered 
as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more 
like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than 
anything else. She wore at her side a gentleman’s gold 
watch, if I might judge from its size and make, with an 
appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her 
throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists 
like little shirt-wristbands. 

Mr. Dick, as 1 have already said, was gray-headed and 
florid; I should have said all about him, in saying so, had 
not his head been curiously bowed—not by age; it reminded 
me of one of Mr. Creakle’s boys’ heads after a beating—and 
his gray eyes, prominent and large, with a strange kind of 
watery brightness in them that made me—in combination 
with his vacant manner, his submission to my aunt, and his 
childish delight when she praised him—suspect him of being 
a little mad; though, if he were mad, how he came to be 
there puzzled me extremely. He was dressed like any other 
ordinary gentleman, in a loose gray morning coat and waist- 
coat, and white trousers; and had his watch in his fob, and 
his money in his pockets—which he rattled as if he were very 
proud of it. 

Janet was a pretty, blooming girl, of about nineteen or 


234 Works of Charles Diekens 


ad 


twenty, and a perfect picture of neatness. Though I made 
no further observation of her at the moment, I may mention 
here what I did not discover until afterward; namely, that - 
she was one of a series of protégees whom my aunt had 
taken into her service expressly to educate in a renouncement 
of mankind, and who had generally completed their abjura- 
tion by marrying the baker. 

The room was as neat as Janet or my aunt. As I laid 
down my pen, a moment since, to think of it, the air from 
the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of 
the flowers; and I saw the old-fashioned furniture brightly 
rubbed and polished, my aunt’s inviolable chair and table by 
the round green fan in the bow-window, the drugget-covered. 
carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries, the old 
china, the punch-bowl full of dried rose leaves, the tall press 
guarding all sorts of bottles and pots, and, wonderfully out 
of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking 
note of everything. 

Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when my 
aunt, to my great alarm, became in one moment rigid with 
indignation, and had hardly voice to cry out, ‘‘Janet! Don- 
keys!’’ 

Upon which, Janet came running up the stairs as if the 
house were in flames, darted out on a little piece of green in 
front, and warned off two saddle-donkeys, lady ridden, that 
had presumed to set hoof upon it; while my aunt, rushing 
out of the house, seized the bridle of a third animal laden 
with a bestriding child, turned him, led him forth from 
those sacred precincts, and boxed the ears of the unlucky 
urchin in attendance who had dared to profane that hal- 
lowed ground. 

To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any 
lawful right of way over that patch of green; but she had 
settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the 
same to her. The one great outrage of her life, demanding 
to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over 
that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was en- 


David Gopperfield 235 


gaged, however interesting to her the conversation in which 
she was taking part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas 
in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water 
and watering-pots were kept in secret places ready to be dis- 
charged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush 
behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant 
war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to 
the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the don- 
keys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with con- 
stitutional obstinacy in coming that way. 1 only know that 
there were three alarins before the bath was ready; and that 
on. the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, [ saw 
my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of 
fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before 
he seemed to comprehend what was the matter. These inter- 
ruptions were the more ridiculous to me, because she was 
giving me broth out of a tablespoon at the time (having firmly 
persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must re- 
ceive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while 
my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she would put 
it back into the basin, cry ‘‘Janet! ease. > and go out 
to the assault. 

The bath was a great comfort. For I began to be sensible 
of acute pains in my limbs from lying out in the fields, and 
was now so tired and low that I could hardly keep myself 
awake for five minutes together. When I had bathed they 
(I mean my aunt and Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a 
pair of trousers belonging to Mr, Dick, and tied me up in two 
or three great shawls. What sort of bundle I looked like, 
I don’t know; but I felt a very hot one. Feeling also very 
faint and drowsy, I soon lay down on the sofa again and fell 
asleep. 

lt might have been a dream, originating in the fancy 
which had occupied my mind so long, but I awoke with the 
impression that my aunt had come and bent over me, and 
had put my hair away from my face, and laid my head more 
comfortably, and had then stood looking at me. The words, 


236 Works of Charles Diekens 


‘**Pretty fellow,’’ or ‘‘Poor fellow,’’ seemed to be in my ears, 
too; but certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke, to 
lead me to believe that they had been uttered by my aunt, 
who sat in the bow-window gazing at the sea from behind 
the green fan, which was mounted on a kind of swivel, and 
turned any way. 

We dined soon after 1 awoke, off a roast fowl and a pud- 
ding; I sitting at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and 
moving my arms with considerable difficulty. But as my 
aunt had swathed me up, I made no complaint of being in- 
convenienced. All this time 1 was deeply anxious to know 
what she was going to do with me; but she took her dinner 
in profound silence, except when she occasionally fixed her 
eyes on me sitting opposite and said, ‘‘Mercy upon us!’ which 
did not by any means relieve my anxiety. 

The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the 
table (of which I had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick 
again, who joined us, and looked as wise as he could when 
she requested him to attend to my story, which she elicited 
from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During my 
recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who I thought 
would have gone to sleep but for that, and who, when- 
soever he lapsed into a smile, was checked by a frown from 
my aunt. 

‘‘Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that 
she must go and be married again?’ said my aunt, when I 
had finished, ‘‘J can’t conceive.’’ 

‘*Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,’’ Mr. 
Dick suggested. 

‘*Fell in love!’’ repeated my aunt. ‘*‘What do you mean? 
What business had she to do it?”’ 

‘*Perhaps,’’ Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, ‘‘she 
did it for pleasure.”’ 

**Pleasure, indeed!’’ replied my aunt. ‘‘A mighty pleas- 
ure for the poor baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of 
a fellow, certain to ill-use her in some way or other. -What 
did she propose to herself, I should like to know! She had 


David Copperfield 237 


had one husband. She had seen.David Copperfield out of the 
world, who was always running after wax-dolls from his 
cradle. She had got a baby—oh, there were a pair of babies 
when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday 
night !—and what more did she want?’’ 

Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought 
there was no getting over this. 

‘She couldn’t even have a baby like anybody else,”’ said 
my aunt. ‘*Where was this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood! 
Not forthcoming. Don’t tell me!’’ 

Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened. 

‘‘That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,”’ 
said my aunt, ‘‘Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was 
he about? All he could do was to say to me, like a robin 
redbreast—as he is—‘It’s a boy!’ A boy! Yah, the imbe- 
cility of the whole set of ’em!’’ | 

The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick ex- 
ceedingly; and me, too, if I am to tell the truth. 

‘*And then, ‘as if this was not enough, and she had not 
stood sufficiently in the light of this child’s sister, Betsey 
Trotwood,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘she marries a second time—goes 
and marries a Murderer—or a man with a name like it—and 
stands in this child’s light! And the natural consequence 
is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen, that he 
prowls and wanders. He’s as like Cain before he was grown 
. up as he can be.”’ 

Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this 
character. 

‘‘And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,”’ 
said my aunt, ‘‘that Peggotty, she goes and gets married ~ 
next. Because she has not seen enough of the evil attend- 
ing such things, she goes and gets married next, as the child 
relates. I only hope,’’ said my aunt, shaking her head, ‘‘that 
her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in 
the newspapers, and will beat her well with one.”’ 

I could not bear to hear my old nurse so described, and 
made the subject of such a wish. 1 told my aunt that indeed 


238 Works of Charles Diekens 


she was mistaken. That Peggotty was the best, the truest, 
the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend 
and servant in the world; who had ever loved me dearly, who 
had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s 
dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had im- 
printed her last grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them 
both choking me, I broke down as I was trying to say that 
her home was my home, and that all she had was mine, and 
that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her humble 
station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble 
on her—I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and 
laid my face in my hands upon the table. 

‘“Well, well!’ said my aunt, “‘the child is right to stand 
by those who have stood by him—Janet!. Donkeys!’’ 

1 thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate don- 
keys we should have come to a good understanding; for my 
aunt had laid her hand on my shoulder, and the impulse 
was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her and beseech 
her protection. But the interruption, and the disorder she 
was thrown into by the struggle outside, put an end to all 
softer ideas for the present, and kept my aunt indignantly 
declaiming to Mr. Dick about her determination to appeal 
for redress to the laws of her country, and to bring actions 
for trespass against the whole donkey proprietorship of Dover, 
until tea-time. 

After tea, we sat at the window—on the lookout, as I - 
imagined, from my aunt’s sharp expression of face, for 
more invaders—until dusk, when Janet set candles, and a 
backgammon board, on the table, and pulled down the 
blinds. 

**Now, Mr. Dick,’’ said my aunt, with her grave look, 
and her forefinger up as before, ‘‘1 am going to ask you an- 
other question. Look at this child.’’ 

_“David’s son?’’ said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled 
face. 

*‘E:xactly so,’’ returned my aunt. ‘‘What would you do 
with him, now?’’ 


David Ropperfield 239 - 


‘Do with David’s son?’’ said Mr. Dick. 

‘*Ay,’’ replied my aunt, ‘‘with David’s son?”’ 

‘Oh!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘‘Yes. Do with—I should put 
him to bed.”’ 

‘Janet!’ cried my aunt, with the same complacent tri- 
umph that I had remarked before. ‘‘Mr. Dick sets us all 
right. If the bed is ready, we’ll take him up to it.’’ 

_ Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; 
kindly, but in some sort like a prisoner, my aunt going in 
front and Janet bringing up the rear. The only circum- 
stance which gave me any new hope was my aunt stopping 
on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent 
there; and Janet replying that she had been making tinder 
down in the kitchen of my old shirt. But there were no 
other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; 
and when | was left there, with a little taper which my aunt 
forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them 
lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in 
my mind, 1 deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know 
nothing of me, might suspect that I had a habit of running 
away, and took precautions, on that account, to have me in 
safe keeping. 

The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, 
overlooking the sea, on which the moon was shining bril- 
liantly. After I had said my prayers, and the candle had 
burned out, I remember how | still sat looking at the moon- 
light on the water, as if I could hope to read my fortune in 
it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother with her child, 
coming from heaven along that shining path, to look upon 
me as she had looked when I last saw her sweet face. I re- 
member how the solemn feeling with which at length I turned 
my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest 
which the sight of the white-curtained bed—and how much 
more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow- 
white sheets!—inspired. I remember how I thought of all 
the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and 
how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and 


240 Works of Charles Diekens 


never might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed 
to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that re upon 
the sea, away into the world of dreams. 


. CHAPTER EOUE LER 
MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME 


ON going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing 
so profoundly over the breakfast-table, with her elbow on the 
tray, that the contents of the urn had overflowed the teapot, 
and were laying the whole tablecloth under water, when my 
entrance put her meditations to flight. I felt sure that I had 
been the subject of her reflections, and was more than ever 
anxious to know her intentions toward me. Yet I dared not 
express my anxiety, lest it should give her offense. | 

_ My eyes, however, not being so much under control as 
my tongue, were attracted toward my aunt very often during 
breakfast. I never could look at her for a few moments to- 
gether but I found her looking at me—in an odd, thoughtful 
manner, as if I were an immense way off, instead of being 
on the other side of the small round table. When she had 
finished her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back 
in her chair, knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contem- 
plated me at her leisure, with such a fixedness of attention 
that I was quite overpowered by embarrassment. Not having 
as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted to hide my con- 
fusion by proceeding with it; but my knife tumbled over my 
fork, my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon 
a surprising height into the air instead of cutting them for 
my own eating, and choked myself with my tea, which per- 
sisted in going the wrong way instead of the right one, until 
I gave in altogether, and sat blushing under my aunt’s close 
scrutiny. 

‘*Hallo!’’ said my aunt, after a long time. 

I looked up, and met her sharp, bright glance respectfully. 


David Gopperfield 241 


‘*T have written to him,’’ said my aunt. 

ro?” ? 

‘To your father-in-law,’’ said my aunt. ‘‘I have sent 
him a letter that I'll trouble him to attend to, or he and I 
will fall out, I can tell him!’ 

‘‘Does he know where I am, aunt?’’ I inquired, alarmed. 

‘*T have told him,’’ said my aunt, with a nod. 

‘‘Shall I—be—given up to him?’’ I faltered. 

*‘T don’t know,’’ said my aunt. ‘* We shall see.”’ 

‘Oh! 1 can’t think what I shall do,’”’ I exclaimed, ‘‘if I 
have to go back to Mr. Murdstone.”’ 

*‘T don’t know anything about it,’’ said my aunt, shaking 
her head. ‘‘I can’t say, [am sure. We shall see.”’ 

My spirits sank under these words, and I became very 
downcast and heavy of heart. My aunt, without appearing 
to take much heed of me, put on a coarse apron with a bib, 
which she took out of the press; washed up the teacups with 
her own hands, and, when everything was washed and set 
in the tray again, and the cloth folded and put on the top 
of the whole, rang for Janet to remove it. She next swept 
up the crumbs with a little broom (putting on a pair of gloves 
first), until there did not appear to be one microscopic speck 
left on the carpet; next dusted and arranged the room, which 
was dusted and arranged to a hair breadth already. When 
all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took 
off the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the 
particular corner of the press from which they had been 
taken, brought out her work-box to her own table in the open 
window, and sat down, with the green fan between her and 
the light, to work. 

**T wish you ’d go upstairs,’ ’ said my aunt, as she threaded 
her needle, ‘‘and give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and I'll 
be glad to know how he gets on with his Memorial.”’ 

I rose with all alacrity to acquit myself of this commission. 

*‘T suppose,’’ said my aunt, eying me as narrowly as she 
had eyed the needle in threading it, ogi think Mr. Dick a 
short name, eh?’’ 


242 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘*] thought it was rather a short name yesterday,’’ I con- - 
fessed. 

‘You are not to suppose that he hasn’t got a longer name, if 
he chose to use it,’’ said my aunt, with a loftier air. ‘‘Babley 
—Mr. Richard Babley—that’s the gentleman’s true name.”’ 

I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth 
and the familiarity I had already been guilty of, that I had 
better give him the full benetit of that name, when my aunt 
went on to say: 

‘*But don’t you call him by it, whatever you do. He 
can’t bear his name. That’s a peculiarity of his. Though 
1 don’t know that it’s much of a peculiarity, either; for he 
has been ill-used enough, by some that bear it, to have a . 
mortal antipathy for it, Heaven knows. Mr. Dick is his 
name here, and everywhere else, now—if he ever went any- 
where else, which he don’t. So take care, child, you don’t 
call him anything but Mr. Dick.”’ 

I promised to obey, and went upstairs with my message, 
thinking, as I. went, that if Mr. Dick had been working at 
his Memorial long, at the same rate as I had seen him work- 
ing at it, through the open door, when I came down, he was 
probably getting on very well indeed. I found him still - 
driving at it with a long pen, and his head almost laid upon 
the paper. He was so intent upon it that I had ample leisure 
to observe the large paper kite in a corner, the confusion of 
bundles of manuscript, the number of pens, and, above all, 
the quantity of ink (which he seemed to have in, in half-gallon 
jars by the dozen), before he observed my being present. 

‘*Ha! Phoebus!’’ said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. 
‘‘How does the world go? Ill tell you what,’® he added, 
in a lower tone, ‘‘I shouldn’t wish it to be mentioned, but 
it’s a—’’ here he beckoned to me, and put his lips close to 
my ear—‘“‘it’s a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!’’ said 
Mr. Dick, taking snuff from a round box on the table, and 
laughing heartily. 

Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I 
delivered my message. 


David @opperfield 24% 


**Well,’”? said Mr. Dick, in answer, ‘‘my compliments to 
her, and I—I believe I have made a start. I think I have 
made a start,’’? said Mr. Dick, passing his hand among his 
gray hair, and casting anything but a confident look at his 
manuscript. ‘*‘You have been to school?’’ 

‘*Yes, sir,’’ I answered, ‘‘for a short time.’’ 

‘‘Do you recollect the date,’’? said Mr. Dick, looking ear- 
nestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, ‘‘when 
King Charles the First had his head cut off?’’ 

I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred 
and forty-nine. 

‘*Well,’’ returned Mr. Dick, aitndlokihg. his ear with his 
pen, and looking dubiously at me. ‘‘So the books say; but 
I don’t see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, 
how could the people about him have made that mistake of 
putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken 
off, into mine?” 

I was very much surprised by the inquiry, but could give 
no information on this point. 

‘‘Tt’s very strange,’’? said Mr. Dick, with a despondent 
look upon his papers, and with his hand among his hair 
again, ‘‘that 1 never can get that quite right. I never can 
make that perfectly clear. But no matter, no matter!’’ he 
said, cheerfully, and rousing himself, ‘‘there’s time enough! 
My compliments to Miss Trotwood, 1 am getting on very 
well indeed.”’ 

I was going away, when he directed my attention to the 
kite. 

‘‘What do you think of that for a kite?’’ he said. 

I answered that it was a beautiful one. I should think 
it must have been as much as seven feet high. 

‘1 made it. _We’ll go and fly it, you and I, > said Mr. 
Dick. ‘‘Do you see this?”’ 

He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very 
closely and laboriously written, but so plainly that as 1 looked 
along the lines, I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles 
the First’s head again, in one or two places. 


244 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘There’s plenty of string,’’ said Mr. Dick, ‘‘and when it 
flies high it takes the facts a long way. That’s my manner 
of diffusing ’em. I don’t know where they may come down. 
It’s according to circumstances, and the wind, and so forth; 
but I take my chance of that.”’ 

His face was so very mild and pleasant, and had something 
so reverend in it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was 
not sure but that he was having a good-humored jest with 
me. SoI laughed, and he laughed, and we parted the best 
friends possible. 

‘‘Well, child,’? said my aunt, when I went downstairs. | 
‘‘And what of Mr. Dick this morning?’’ 

I informed her that he sent his compliments, and was 
getting on very well indeed. 

‘*What do you think of him?’’ said my aunt. 

I had some shadowy idea of endeavoring to evade the 
question by replying that I thought him a very nice gentle- 
man; but my aunt.was not to be so put off, for she laid her 
work down on her lap, and said, folding her hands upon it: 
‘‘Come! your sister Betsey Trotwood would have told me 
what she thought of any one directly. Be as like your sister 
as you can, and speak out!”’ | 

‘“1s he—is Mr. Dick—I ask because 1 don’t know, aunt— ~ 
is he at all-out of his mind, then?’’ I stammered; for I felt 
[I was on dangerous ground. 

‘*Not a morsel,’’ said my aunt. 

*“Oh, indeed!’’ I observed, faintly. 

‘“‘If there is anything in the world,’’ said my aunt, with 
great decision and force of manner, ‘‘that Mr. Dick is not, 
it’s that.”’ ni 

1 had nothing better to offer than another timid ‘‘Oh, 
indeed !”’ 

‘‘He has been called mad,’’ said my aunt. ‘I have a 
selfish pleasure in saying that he has been called mad, or I 
should not have had the benefit of his society and advice 
for these last ten years and upward—in fact, ever since 
your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me.”’ 


David Copperfield 245 


‘*So long as that?’’ I said. 

**And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call 
him mad,’’ pursued my aunt. ‘‘Mr. Dick is a sort of distant 
connection of mine—it doesn’t matter how; I needn’t enter 
into that. If it hadn’t been for me, his own brother would 
have shut him up for life. That’s all.’’ 

I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my 
aunt felt strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt 
strongly, too. 

‘‘A proud fool!’ said my aunt. ‘‘Because his brother 
was a little eccentric—though he is not half so eccentric as 
a good many people-—he didn’t like to have him visible about 
his house, and sent him away to some private asylum-place, 
though he had been left to his particular care by their deceased 
father, who thought him almost a natural. And a wise man 
he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt.’’ 

Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavored 
to look quite convinced also. 

**So I stepped in,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘and made him an offer. 
I said, your brother’s sane—a great deal more sane than you 
are, or ever will be, it is to be hoped. Let him have his little 
income, and come and live withme. Jam not afraid of him, 
I am not proud, J am ready to take care of him, and shall 
not ill-treat him as some people (besides the asylum folks) 
have done. After a good deal of squabbling,’’ said my aunt, 
‘*T got him; and he has been here ever since. He is the 
most friendly and amenable creature in existence, and as for 
advice!—But nobody knows what that man’s mind is, except 
myself.”’ } c 

My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her head, as if 
she smoothed defiance of the whole world out of the one and 
shook it out of the other. 

‘‘He had a favorite sister,’ said my aunt, ‘‘a good creat- 
ure, and very kind to him. But she did what they all do— 
took a husband. And he did what they all do—made her 
wretched. It had such an effect upon the mind of Mr. Dick 
(that’s not madness, I hope!) that, combined with his fear 


246 Works of Charles Diekens 


of his brother, and his sense of his unkindness, it threw him 
into a fever. That was before he came to me, but the recol- 
lection of it is oppressive to him even now. Did he say any- 
thing to you about King Charles the First, child?’’ 

““Yes, aunt.’’ 

‘“Ah!”’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a 
little vexed. ‘‘That’s his allegorical way of expressing it. 
Ife connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, 
naturally, and that’s the figure, or the simile, or whatever 
it’s called, which he chooses to use. And why shouldn’t he, 
if he thinks proper!’’ : 

I said: ‘‘Certainly, aunt.”’ 

**Tt’s not a business-like way of speaking,’’ said my aunt, 
‘‘nor a worldly way. I am aware of that; and that’s the 
reason why [insist upon it, that there shan’t be a word about 
it in his Memorial.”’ 

‘*Ts it a memorial about his own history, that he is writing, 
aunt?”’ 

‘*Yes, child,’’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose again. ‘‘He 
is memorializing the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Somebody 
or other—one of those people, at all events, who are paid to 
be memorialized—about his affairs. I suppose it will go in 
one of these days. He hasn’t been able to draw it up yet, 
without introducing that mode of expressing himself; but it 
don’t signify; it keeps him employed.” 

In fact, I found out afterward that Mr. Dick had been for ~ 
upward of ten years endeavoring to keep King Charles the 
First out of the Memorial; but he had been constantly getting 
into it, and was there now. 

“‘T say again,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘nobody knows what that 
man’s mind is except myself; and he’s the most amenable and 
friendly creature in existence. If he likes to fly a kite some- 
times, what of that! Franklin used to fly a kite. He was 
a Quaker, or something of that sort, if 1 am not mistaken. 
And a Quaker flying a kite is a much more ridiculous object 
than anybody else.”’ 

If I could have supposed that my aunt had recounted these 


David @opperfield 247 


particulars for my especial behoof, and as a piece of confidence 
in me, I should have felt very much distinguished, and should 
have augured favorably from such a mark of her good opinion. 
But I could hardly help observing that she had launched into 
them, chiefly because the question was raised in her own 
mind, and with very little reference to me, though she had 
addressed herself to me in the absence of anybody else. 

At the same time, I must say that the generosity of her 
championship of poor, harmless Mr. Dick not only inspired 
my young breast with some selfish hope for myself, but 
warmed it unselfishly toward her. I believe that I began 
to know that there was something about my aunt, notwith- 
standing her many eccentricities and odd humors, to be hon- 
ored and trusted in. Though she was just as sharp that day 
as on the day before, and was in and out about the donkeys 
just as often, and was thrown into a tremendous state of 
indignation when a young man, going by, ogled Janet at 
a window (which was one of the gravest misdemeanors that 
could be committed against my aunt’s dignity), she seemed 
to me to command more of my respect, if not less of my 
fear. 

The anxiety I underwent, in the interval which neces- 
sarily elapsed before a reply could be received to her letter 
to Mr. Murdstone, was extreme; but I made an endeavor to 
suppress it, and to be as agreeable as I could in a quiet way, 
both to my aunt and Mr. Dick. The latter and I would have 
gone out to fly the great kite; but that I had still no other 
clothes than the anything but ornamental garments with 
which I had been decorated on the first day, and which con- 
fined me to the house, except for an hour after dark, when 
my aunt, for my health’s sake, paraded me up and down on 
the cliff outside before going to bed. At length the reply 
from Mr. Murdstone came, and my aunt informed me, to my 
infinite terror, that he was coming to speak to her himself 
on the next day. On the next day, still bundled up in my 
curious habiliments, I sat counting the time, flushed and 
heated by the conflict of sinking hopes and rising fears 


248 Works of @harles Dickens — 


within me, and waiting to be startled by the sight of the 
gloomy face, whose non-arrival startled me every minute. 
_ My aunt was a little more imperious and stern than 
usual, but I observed no other token of her preparing herself 
to receive the visitor so much dreaded by me. She sat at 
work in the window, and I sat by, with my thoughts running 
astray on all possible and impossible results of Mr. Murd- 
stone’s visit, until pretty late in the afternoon. Our dinner 
had been indefinitely postponed; but it was growing so late 
that my aunt had ordered it to be got ready, when she gave 
a sudden alarm of donkeys, and to my consternation and 
amazement, I beheld Miss Murdstone, on a side-saddle, ride 
deliberately over the sacred piece of green, and stop in front 
of the house, looking about her. 
‘‘Go along with you!’ cried my aunt, shaking her head 


and her fist at the window. ‘‘You have no business there. 
How dare you trespass? Go along! Oh! you bold-faced 
thing !’’ 


My aunt was so exasperated by the coolness with which 
Miss Murdstone looked about her that I really believe she 
was motionless, and unable for the moment to dart out ac- 
cording to custom. I seized the opportunity to inform her 
who it was, and that the gentleman now coming near the 
offender (for the way up was very steep, and he had dropped 
behind), was Mr. Murdstone himself. 

“YT don’t care who it is!’ cried my aunt, still shaking her 
head, and gesticulating anything but welcome from the bow- 
window. ‘‘I won’t be trespassed upon. Iwon’tallowit. Go 
away! Janet, turn him round. Lead him off!’ and I saw, 
from behind my aunt, a sort of hurried battle-piece, in which 
the donkey stood resisting everybody, with all his four legs 
planted different ways, while Janet tried to pull him round by 
the bridle, Mr. Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murd- 
stone struck at Janet with a parasol, and several boys, who 
had come to see the engagement, shouted vigorously. Butmy 
aunt, suddenly descrying among them the young malefactor 
who was the donkey’s guardian, and who was one of the 


David Copperfield 249 


most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in his 
teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, 
captured him, dragged him, with his jacket over his head, 
and his heels grinding the ground, into the garden, and 
calling upon Janet to fetch the constables and justices, that 
he might be taken, tried, and executed on the spot, held him 
at bay there. This part of the business, however, did not 
last long; for the young rascal, being expert at a variety of 





THE BATTLE ON THE GREEN 


feints and dodges, of which my aunt had no conception, soon 
went whooping away, leaving some deep impressions of his 
nailed boots in the flower-beds, and taking his donkey in 
triumph with him. 

Miss Murdstone, during the latter portion of the contest, 
had dismounted, and was now waiting with her brother at 
the bottom of the steps, until my aunt should be at leisure 
to receive them. My aunt, a little ruffled by the combat, 
marched past them into the house, with great dignity, and 


250 Works of Charles Dickens 


took no notice of their presence, until they were announced 
by Janet. 

‘‘Shall I go away, aunt?’’ 1 asked, trembling. 

“No, sir,’? said my aunt. ‘‘Certainly not!’ With which 
she pushed me into a corner near her, and fenced me in with 
a chair, as if it were a prison or a bar of justice. This posi- 
tion I continued to occupy during the whole interview, and 
from it I now saw Mr. and Miss Murdstone enter the room. 

‘Oh!’ said my aunt, “‘I was not aware at first to whom 
I had the pleasure of objecting. But I don’t allow anybody 
to ride over that turf. I make no exceptions. I don’t allow 
anybody to do it.”’ 

‘‘Your regulation is rather awkward to strangers,’’ said 
Miss Murdstone. | 

**Ts it?”? said my aunt. 

Mr. Murdstone seemed afraid of a renewal of hostilities, 
and interposing, began: 

**Miss Trotwood !”’ 

‘*l beg your pardon,’’ observed my aunt, with a keen look. 
‘*You are the Mr. Murdstone who married the widow of my 
late nephew, David Copperfield, of Blunderstone Rookery ?— 
Though why Rookery, J don’t know!’ 

‘‘T am,’’ said Mr. Murdstone. 

‘*You’ll excuse my saying, sir,’’ returned my aunt, ‘‘that 
1 think it would have been a much better and happier thing 
if you had left that poor child alone.”’ 

‘‘T so far agree with what Miss Trotwood bas remarked,”’ 
observed Miss Murdstone, bridling, ‘‘that I consider our la- 
mented Clara to have been, in all essential respects, a mere 
child.”’ 

‘‘T¢ is a comfort to you and me, ma’am,’’ said my aunt, 
‘‘who are getting on in life, and are not likely to be made 
unhappy by our personal attractions, that nobody can say 
the same of us.”’ 

‘*No doubt!’ returned Miss Murdstone; though, 1 thought, 
not with a very ready or gracious assent. ‘‘And it certainly 
might have been, as you say, a better and happier thing for 


David Gopperfield 251 


my brother if he had never entered intv such a marriage. I 
have always been of that opinion.”’ 

**] have no doubt you have,” said my aunt. ‘‘Janet,”’ 
ringing the bell, ‘‘my compliments to Mr. Dick, and beg him 
to come down.”’ 

Until he came, my aunt sat perfectly upright and _ stiff, 
frowning at the wall. When he came my aunt performed 
the ceremony of introduction. 

“Mr. Dick.” An old and intimate friend. On whose 
judgment,’’ said my aunt, with emphasis, as an admonition 
to Mr. Dick, who was biting his forefinger, and looking 
rather foolish, ‘‘I rely.’’ 

Mr. Dick took his finger out of his mouth, on this hint, 
and stood among the group, with a grave and attentive ex- 
pression of face. My aunt inclined her head to Mr. Murd- 
stone, who went on: 

‘*Miss Trotwood: on the hecdins of your letter, I considered 
it an act of ee justice to myself, and perhaps of more 
respect to you—’’ : 

*‘*Thank you,”’ oot my aunt, still eying him keenly. 
‘You needn’t mind me.’ 

**To answer it in person, however inconvenient the jour- 
ney,’’ pursued Mr. Murdstone, ‘‘rather than by letter. This 
unhappy boy, who has run away from his friends and his 
occupation—”’ 

‘‘And whose appearance,’’ interposed his sister, directing 
general attention to me in my indefinable costume, ‘‘is per- 
fectly scandalous and disgraceful.”’ 

** Jane Murdstone,’’ said her brother, ‘Shave the goodness 
not to interrupt me. This unhappy boy, Miss Trotwood, bas 
been the occasion of much domestic trouble and uneasiness, 
both during the lifetime of my late dear wife, and since.. He 
has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an 
untoward, intractable disposition. Both my sister and my- 
self have endeavored to correct his vices, but ineffectually. 
And I have felt—we both have felt, I may say; my sister 
being fully in my confidence—that it is right you should 


Rd2 : Works of Charles Dickens 


receive this grave and dispassionate assurance from our 
lips.”’ 

‘‘It can hardly be necessary for me to confirm anything 
stated by my brother,’’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘‘but I beg to 
observe that, of all the boys in the world, I believe this is the 
worst boy.”’ 

‘‘Strong!? said my aunt, shortly. 

‘‘But not at all too strong for the facts,” returned Miss 
Murdstone. 

‘‘Ha!l’? said my aunt. ‘‘ Well, sir?”’ 

‘‘t have my own opinions,’’ resumed Mr. Murdstone, 
whose face darkened more and more, the more he and my 
aunt observed each other, which they did very narrowly, ‘‘as 
to the best mode of bringing him up; they are founded, in 
part, on my knowledge of him, and in part on my knowledge 
of my own means and resources. Il am responsible for them 
to myself, 1 act upon them, and I say no more about them. 
It is enough that I place this boy under the eye of a friend 
of my own, in a respectable business; that it does not please 
him; that he runs away from it; makes himself a common 
vagabond about the country; and comes here, in rags, to 
appeal to you, Miss Trotwood. Il wish to set before you, 
honorably, the exact consequences—so far as they are within 
my knowledge—of your abetting him in this appeal.”’ 

‘“But about the respectable business first,’ said my aunt. 
‘‘Tf he had been your own boy you would have put him to it, 
just the same, I suppose?”’ 

‘Tf he had been my brother’s own boy,’’ returned Miss 
Murdstone, striking in, ‘‘his character, I trust, would have 
been altogether different.”’ 

‘‘Or if the poor child, his mother, had been alive, he would 
still have gone into the respectable business, would he?”’ said 
my aunt. 

‘*T believe,’’ said Mr. Murdstone, with an inclination of 
his head, ‘‘that Clara would have disputed nothing which 
myself and my sister Jane Murdstone were agreed was for 
the best.” 


David Ropperfield 253 


Miss Murdstone confirmed this with an audible murmur. 

*‘Humph!”’ said my aunt. ‘‘Unfortunate baby!’’ 

Mr. Dick, who had been rattling his money all this time, 
was rattling it so loudly now that my aunt felt it necessary 
to check him with a look, before saying: 

‘*The poor child’s annuity died with her?”’ 

**Died with her,’’ replied Mr. Murdstone. 

‘*And there was no settlement of the little property—the 
house and garden—the what’s-its-name Rookery without any 
rooks in it—upon her boy?”’ 

**1t had been left to her, unconditionally, by her first hus- 
band,’’ Mr. Murdstone began, when my aunt caught him up 
with the greatest irascibility and impatience. 

*‘Good Lord, man, there’s no occasion to say that. Left 
to her unconditionally! I think I see David Copperfield look- 
ing forward to any condition of any sort or kind, though it 
stared him point-blank in the face! Of course it was left to 
her unconditionally. But when she married again—when 
she took that most disastrous step of marrying you, inshort,”’ 
said my aunt, ‘‘to be plain—did no one put in a word for the 
boy at that time?”’ 

‘**My late wife loved her second husband, madam,’’ said 
Mr. Murdstone, ‘‘and trusted implicitly in him.’’ 

*‘Your late wife, sir, was a most unworldly, most un- 
happy, most unfortunate baby,” returned my aunt, shaking 
her head at him. ‘‘That’s what she was. And, now, what 
have you got to say next?’’ 

**Merely this, Miss Trotwood,’’ he returned. ‘‘I am here 
to take David back-—to take him back unconditionally, to 
dispose of him as | think proper, and to deal with him as 
I think right. 1 am not here to make any promise, or give 
any pledge to anybody. You may possibly have some idea, 
Miss Trotwood, of abetting him in his running away, and 
in his complaints to you. Your manner, which I must say 
does not seem intended to propitiate, induces me to think it 
possible. Now I must caution you thatif you abet him once, 
you abet him for good and all; if you step in between him 


254 Works of Charies Dickens 


and me, now, you must step in, Miss Trotwood, forever. I 
cannot trifle, or be trifled with. Iam here, for the first and 
last time, to take him away. Is he ready to go? If he is 
not—and you tell me he is not; on any pretense; it is in- 
different to me what—my doors are shut against him hence- 
forth, and yours, I take it for granted, are open to him.”’ 

To this address my aunt had listened with the closest 
attention, sitting perfectly upright, with her hands folded 
on one knee, and looking grimly on the speaker. When he 
had finished, she turned her eyes so as to command Miss 
Murdstone, without otherwise disturbing her attitude, and 
said: . 

‘*Well, ma’am, have you got anything to remark?’ 

‘‘Indeed, Miss Trotwood,’’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘‘all that 
I could say has been so well said by my brother, and all that 
1 know to be the fact has been so plainly stated by him, that I 
have nothing to add except my thanks for your politeness. 
For your very great politeness, | am sure,’’ said Miss Murd- 
stone, with an irony which no more affected my aunt than 
it discomposed the cannon | had slept by at Chatham. 

‘*And what does the boy say?’’ said my aunt. ‘‘Are you 
ready to go, David?”’ } 

I answered no, and entreated her not to let me go. I said 
that neither Mr. nor Miss Murdstone had ever liked me, or 
had ever been kind to me. That they had made my mama, 
who always loved me dearly, unhappy about me, and that 
I knew it well, and that Peggotty knewit. I said that I had 
been more miserable than I thought anybody could believe 
who only knew how young Iwas. And I begged and prayed 
my aunt—I forget in what terms now, but I remember that 
they affected me very much then—to befriend and protect 
me, for my father’s sake. 

‘‘Mr. Dick,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘what shall I do with this 
child ?”’ 

Mr. Dick considered, hesitated, brightened, and rejoined, 
‘‘Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly.”’ 

‘‘Mr. Dick,’’ said my aunt, triumphantly, ‘‘give me your 


David Gopperfield 255 


hand, for your common sense is invaluable.’’? Having shaken 
it with great cordiality, she pulled me toward her, and said - 
to Mr. Murdstone: 

‘You can go when you like; I’ll take my chance with 
the boy. If he’s all you say he is, at least I can do as much 
for him then as. you have done. But I don’t believe a word 
of it.’’ 

‘Miss Trotwood,’’ rejoined Mr. Murdstone, shrugging 
his shoulders, as he rose, ‘‘if you were a gentleman—”’ 

‘*‘Bah! stuff and nonsense!’’ said my aunt. ‘‘Don’t talk 
to me!”’ | 

*““How exquisitely polite!’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone, 
rising. ‘‘Overpowering, really !’’ 

*‘Do you think I don’t know,’’ said my aunt, turning a 
deaf ear to the sister, and continuing to address the brother, 
and to shake her head at him with infinite expression, ‘‘ what 
kind of life you must have led that poor, unhappy, misdi- 
rected baby? Do you think I don’t know what a woful 
day it was for the soft little creature when youw first came 
in her way —smirking and making great eyes at her, I'll be 
bound, as if you couldn’t say*boh! to a goose!’’ 

“‘T never heard anything so elegant!’’ said Miss Murd- 
stone. 

“Do you think I can’t understand you as well as if 1 had 
seen you,’’ pursued my aunt, ‘“‘now that I do see and hear 
you—which I tell you candidly is anything but a pleasure to 
me? Oh yes, bless us! who so smooth and silky as Mr. 
Murdstone at first! The poor, benighted innocent had never 
seen such a man. He was made of sweetness. He wor- 
shiped her. He doted on her boy—tenderly doted on him! 
He was to be another father to him, and they were all to live 
together in a garden of roses, weren’t they? Ugh! Get 
_along with you, do!”’ said my aunt. 

“‘T never heard anything like this person in my life!’’ 
exclaimed Miss Murdstone. 

‘*And when you had made sure of the poor little fool,’’ 
said my aunt—‘‘God forgive me that I should call her so, 


256 Works of Charles Dickens 


and she gone where you won’t go in a hurry—because you 
-had not done wrong enough to her and hers, you must begin 
to train her, must you? begin to- break her, like a poor caged 
bird, and wear her deluded life away, in teaching her to sing 
your notes?’’ | 

‘‘This is either Tear or intoxication,’’ said Miss Murd- 
stone, in a perfect agony at not being able to turn the current 
of my aunt’s address toward herself, ‘‘and my suspicion is, 
that it’s intoxication.”’ 

Miss Betsey, without taking the least notice of the inter- 
ruption, continued to address herself to Mr. Murdstone, as if 
there had been no such thing. 

‘‘Mr. Murdstone,’’ she said, shaking her finger at him, 
‘‘vou were a tyrant to the simple baby, and you broke her 
heart. She was a loving baby—lI know that; I knew it years 
before you ever saw her—and through the best part of her 
weakness, you gave her the wounds she died of. There is 
the truth for comfort, however you like it. And you and 
your instruments may make the most of it.’’ 

‘‘ Allow me to inquire, Miss Trotwood,’’ interposed Miss 
Murdstone, ‘‘whom you are pleased to call, in a choice of 
words in which I am not experienced, my panthent S instru 
ments?”’ 

Still stone deaf to the voice, and utterly unmoved by it, 
Miss Betsey pursued her discourse. 

‘It was clear enough, as I have told you, years before 
you ever saw her—and why, in the mysterious dispensations 
of Providence, you ever did see her, is more than humanity 
can comprehend—it was clear enough that the poor, soft 
little thing would marry somebody, at some time or other; 
but I did hope it wouldn’t have been as bad as it has turned 
out. That was the time, Mr. Murdstone, when she gave 
birth to her boy here,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘to the poor child you~ 
sometimes tormented her through afterward, which is a dis- 
agreeable remembrance and makes the sight of him odious 
now. Ay, ay! you needn’t wince!’’ said my aunt. “1 
know it’s true without that.’’ 


David Copperfield 257 


He had stood by the door all this while, observant of her 
with a smile upon his face, though his black eyebrows were 
heavily contracted. I remarked now, that, though the smile 
was on his face still, his color had gone in a moment, and he 
seemed to breathe as if,he had been funning. 

‘*Good-day, sir,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘and good-by! Good-day 
to you, too, ma’am,’’ said my aunt, turning suddenly upon 
his sister. ‘‘Let me see you ride a donkey over my green 
again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, 
IV’ll knock your bonnet. off and tread upon it!”’ 

It would require a painter, and no common painter too, 
to depict my aunt’s face as she delivered herself of this very 
unexpected sentiment, and Miss Murdstone’s face as she heard 
it. But the manner of the speech, no less than the matter, 
was so fiery that Miss Murdstone, without a word in answer, 
discreetly put her arm through her brother’s, and walked 
haughtily out of the cottage; my aunt remaining in the 
window looking after them, prepared, | have no doubt, in 
case of the donkey’s reappearance, to carry her threat into 
instant execution. 

No attempt at defiance being made, however, her face 
gradually relaxed, and became so pleasant that I was embold- 
ened to kiss and thank her; which I did with great hearti- 
ness, and with both my arms clasped round her neck. I 
then shook hands with Mr. Dick, who shook hands with me 
a great many times, and hailed this happy close of the pro- 
ceedings with repeated bursts of laughter. 

““You’ll consider yourself guardian, jointly with me, of 
this child, Mr. Dick,’’ said my aunt. 

‘*T shall be delighted,’’ said Mr. Dick, ‘‘to be the guardian 
of David’s son.”’ 

‘““Very good,’’ returned my aunt, ‘‘that’s settled. I have 
been thinking, do you know, Mr. Dick, that I might call him 
Trotwood ?”’ 

‘‘Certainly, certainly. Call him Trotwood, certainly,”’ 
said Mr. Dick. ‘‘David’s son’s Trotwood.”’ 

“Trotwood Copperfield, you mean,’’ returned my aunt. 

‘Vout. II—(9) 


258 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘“Yes, to be sure. Yes. Trotwood Coppertfield,’’ said 
Mr. Dick, a little abashed. 

My aunt took so kindly to the notion that some ready- 
made clothes, which were purchased for me that afternoon, 
were marked ‘‘Trotwood Copperfield,’’ in her own handwrit- 
ing, and in indelible marking=ink, before I put them on; 
and it was settled that all the other clothes which were ordered 
to be made for me (a complete outfit was bespoke that after- 
noon) should be marked in the same way. 

Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with 
everything new about me. Now that the state of doubt was 
over, I felt, for many days, like one in a dream. I never 
thought that [ had a curious couple of guardians, in my aunt 
and Mr. Dick. 1 never thought of anything about myself, 
distinctly. The two things clearest in my mind were, that 
a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life—which 
seemed to lie in the haze of an immeasurable distance, and 
that a curtain had forever fallen on my life at Murdstone & 
Grinby’s. No one has ever raised that curtain since. I 
have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative, with a 
reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance 
of that life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much ~ 
mental suffering and want of hope, that I have never had the 
courage even to examine how long I was doomed to lead it. 
Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. 
I only know that it. was, and ceased to be, and that I have 
written, and there I leave it. 


CHAPTER REE TEEN 
I MAKE ANOTHER BEGINNING 


Mr Dick and 1 soon became the best of friends, and very 
often, when his day’s work was done, went out together to 
fly the great kite. Every day of his life he had a long sit- 
ting at the Memorial, which never made the least progress, 


David Gopperfield — 259 


however hard he labored, for King Charles the First always 
strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside 
and another one begun. The patience and hope with which 
he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild perception 
he had that there was something wrong about King Charles 
the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the 
_ certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial 
out of all shape, made a deep impression on me. What Mr. 
Dick supposed would come of the Memorial, if it were com- 
pleted; where he thought it was to go, or what he thought 
it was to do, he knew no more than anybody else, I believe. 
Nor was it at all necessary that he should trouble himself 
with such questions, for if anything was certain under the 
sun, it was certain that the Memorial never would be finished. 

It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see 
him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. 
What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its 
disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were noth- 
ing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been 
a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, look- 
ing up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at 
his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used 
to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and 
saw him watch the kite high in the quiet air, that it lifted his 
mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish 
thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in, and it 
came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until 
it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he 
seemed to wake gradually out of a dream; and 1 remember 
to have seen him take it up and look about him in a lost 
way, as if they had both come down together, so that I pitied 
him with all my heart. | 

While I advanced in friendship and intimacy with Mr. 
Dick, I did not go backward in the favor of his stanch 
friend, my aunt. She took so kindly to me that, in the 
course of a few weeks, she shortened my adopted name of 
Trotwood into Trot, and even encouraged me to hope that 


260 Works of Charles Diekens 


if I went on as I had begun, I might take equal rank in 
her affections with my sister, Betsey Trotwood. 

‘“T'rot,’’? said my aunt one evening, when the backgam- 
mon-board was placed as usual for herself and Mr. Dick, ‘‘we 
must not forget your education.’”’ 

This was my only subject of anxiety, and I felt quite 
delighted by her referring to it. ' 

‘‘Should you like to go to school at Canterbury?”’ said 
my aunt. 

I replied that 1 should like it very much, as it was so 
near her. 

‘‘Good,’’ said my aunt. ‘‘Should you lké to go to- 
morrow?”’ 

Being already no stranger to the general rapidity of my 
aunt’s evolutions, | was not surprised by the suddenness of 
the proposal, and said: ‘‘ Yes.” 

‘*Good,’’ said my aunt again. ‘“‘Janet, hire the gray 
pony and chaise to-morrow morning at ten o’clock, and 
pack up Master Trotwood’s clothes to-night.”’ 

1 was greatly elated by these orders; but my heart smote 
me for my selfishness, when |] witnessed their effect on Mr. 
Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separa- 
tion, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after 
giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her 
dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him 
any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should some- 
times come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes 
come and see me on a Wednesday, he revived, and vowed to 
make another kite for those occasions, of proportions greatly 
surpassing the present one. In the morning he was down- 
hearted again, and would have sustained himself by giving 
me all the money he had in his possession, gold and silver, 
too, if my aunt had not interposed, and limited the gift to 
five shillings, which, at his earnest petition, were afterward 
increased to ten. We parted at the garden-gate in a most 
affectionate manner, and Mr. Dick did not go into the house 
until my aunt had driven me out of sight of it. 


David Gopperfield 261 


My aunt, who was perfectly indifferent to public opinion, 
drove the gray pony through Dover in a masterly manner, 
sitting high and stiff like a stage coachman, keeping a steady 
eye upon him wherever he went, and making a point of not 
letting him have his own way ip any respect. When we 
came into the country road, she permitted him to relax a 
little, however, and looking at me down in a valley of cushion 
by her side, asked me whether | was happy. 

‘*Very happy, indeed, thank you, aunt,’’ I said. 

She was much gratified; and, both her hands being occw- 
pied, patted me on the head with her whip. 

‘“‘Ts it a large school, aunt?’’ I asked. 

‘*Why, | don’t know,”’ said my aunt. ‘‘We are going 
to Mr. Wickfield’s first.”’ 

‘*Does he keep a school?”’ I asked. 

‘‘No, Trot,’’ said my aunt. ‘‘He keeps an office.”’ 

I asked for no more information about Mr. Wickfield, as 
she offered none, and we conversed on other subjects until 
we came to Canterbury, where, as it was market-day, my 
aunt had a great opportunity of insinuating the gray pony 
among carts, baskets, vegetables, and hucksters’ goods. The 
hair-breadth turns and twists we made drew down upon us 
a variety of speeches from the people standing about, which 
were not always complimentary, but my aunt drove on with 
perfect indifference, and I dare say would have taken her 
own way with as much coolness through an enemy’s 
country. 

At length we stopped before a very old house bulging out 
over the road; a house with long low lattice-windows bulging 
out still further, and beams with carved heads on the ends 
bulging out too, so that I fancied the whole house was leaning 
forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pave- 
ment below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness, The 
old-fashioned brass knocker on the low-arched door, orna- 
mented with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled 
like a star; the two stone steps descending to the door were 
as white as if they had been covered with fair linen; and all 


262 Works of Charles Dickens 


the angles and corners, and carvings and moldings, and 
quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, 
though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that 
ever fell upon the hills. 3 

When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes 
were intent upon the house, 1 saw a cadaverous face appear 
at a small window on the ground-floor (in a little round tower 
that formed one side of the house), and quickly disappear. 
The low-arched door then opened, and the face came out. It 
was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, 
though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which 
is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red haired people. 
lt belonged to a red-haired person—a youth of fifteen, as I 
take it now, but looking much older—whose hair was cropped 
as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows 
and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered 
and unshaded that I remember wondering how he went to 
sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony, dressed in decent 
black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth, buttoned up to the 
throat, and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particu- 
larly attracted my attention as he stood at the pony’s head, 
rubbing his chin with it and looking up at us in the chaise. 

‘‘Is Mr. Wickfield at home, Uriah Heep?’’ said my aunt. 

‘‘Mr. Wickfield’s at home, ma’am,’’ said Uriah Heep, 
‘if you'll please to walk in there’’-—pointing with his long 
hand to the room he meant. 

We got out, and leaving him to hold the pony, went into 
a long, low parlor looking toward the street, from the window 
of which I caught a glimpse, as 1 went in, of Uriah FEleep 
breathing into the pony’s nostrils, and immediately covering 
them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon 
him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two por- 
traits, one of a gentleman with gray hair (though not by any 
means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking 
over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of 
a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who 
was looking at me. 


David Gopperfield 263 

I believe I was turning about in search of Uriah’s picture 
when, a door at the further end of the room opening, a gen- 
tleman entered, at sight of whom I turned to the first-men- 
tioned portrait again, to make quite sure that it had not come 
out of itsframe. But it was stationary; and as the gentle- 
man advanced into the light, 1 saw that he was some years 
older than when he had had his picture painted. 

“*Miss Betsey Trotwood,” said the gentleman, ‘‘pray walk 
in. [I was engaged for the moment, but you’ll excuse my being 
busy. You know my motive. I have but one in life.’’ 

Miss Betsey thanked him, and we went into his room, 
which was furnished as an office, with books, papers, tin 
boxes, and so forth. It looked into a garden, and had an 
iron safe let into the wall, so immediately over the mantel- 
shelf that I wondered, as I sat down, how the sweeps got 
round it when they swept the chimney. 

‘Well, Miss Trotwood,’’ said Mr. Wickfield; for I soon 
found that it was he, and that he was a lawyer, and steward 
of the estates of a rich gentleman of the county, ‘‘what wind 
blows you here? Not an ill wind, | hope?’’ 

‘*No,’’ replied my aunt, ‘‘I have not come for any law.”’ 

‘‘That’s right, ma’am,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘‘You had 
better come for anything else.”’ 

His hair was quite white now, though his eyebrows were 
still black. He had a very agreeable face, and, 1 thought, 
was handsome. There was a certain richness in his com- 
plexion which I had been long accustomed, under Peggotty’s 
tuition, to connect with port wine; and I fancied it was in 
his voice, too, and referred his growing corpulency to the 
same cause. He was very cleanly dressed, in a blue coat, 
striped waistcoat, and nankeen trousers; and his fine, frilled 
shirt and cambric neckcloth looked unusually soft and white, 
reminding my strolling fancy (I call to mind) of the plumage 
on the breast of a swan. 

» **This is my nephew,’’ said my aunt. 

‘‘Wasn’t aware you had one, Miss Trotwood,’’ said Mr. 

Wickfield. 


® 


264 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘My grand-nephew, that is to say,’’ observed my aunt. 

‘“Wasn’t aware you had a grand-nephew, I give you my 
word,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. 

‘‘] have adopted him,’’ said my aunt, with a wave of her 
hand, importing that his knowledge and his ignorance were 
all one to her, ‘‘and I have brought him here to put him to 
a school where he may be thoroughly well-taught and well- 
treated. Now tell me where that school is, and what it is, 
and all about it.”’ | 

‘*Before I can advise you properly,’’ said Mr. Wickfield— 
‘‘the old question, you know. What’s your motive in this?” 

‘‘Deuce take the man!’’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘‘ Always 
fishing for motives, when they’re on the surface! Why, to 
make the child happy and useful.’”’ 

‘‘It must be a mixed motive, I think,’’ said Mr. Wick- 
field, shaking his head and smiling incredulously. 

‘‘A mixed fiddlestick!’’ returned my aunt. ‘‘ You claim 
to have one plain motive in all you do yourself. You don’t 
suppose, I hope, that you are the only plain dealer in the 
world?”’ 

‘‘Ay, but I have only one motive in life, Miss Trotwood,” 
he rejoined, smiling. ‘‘Other people have dozens, scores, 
hundreds. Ihave only one. There’s the difference. How- 
ever, that’s beside the question. The best school? What- 
ever the motive, you want the best?”’ 

My aunt nodded assent. 

‘‘At the best we have,’’ said Mr. Wickfield, considering, 
‘‘vour nephew couldn’t board just now.”’ 

‘‘But he could board somewhere else, I suppose?’’ sug- 
vested my aunt. . 

Mr. Wickfield thought I could. After a little discussion, 
he proposed to take my aunt to the school, that she might see 
it and judge for herself; also, to take her, with the same 
object, to two or three houses where he thought I could be 
boarded. My aunt embracing the proposal, we were all three 
going out together, when he stopped and said: 7 

‘Our little friend here might have some motive, perhaps, 


David Gopperfield ' 265 


for objecting to the arrangements. I think we had _ better 
leave him behind?”’ 

My aunt seemed disposed to contest the point; but to 
facilitate matters 1 said I would gladly remain behind, if 
they pleased; and returned into Mr. Wickfield’s office, where 
I sat down again, in the chair I had first occupied, to await 
their return. 

It so happened that this chair was opposite a narrow 
passage, which ended in the little circular room where I had 
seen Uriah Heep’s pale face looking out of window. Uriah, 
having taken the pony to a neighboring stable, was at work 
at a desk in this room, which had a brass frame on the top 
to hang papers upon, and on which the writing he was mak- 
ing a copy of wasthen hanging. Though his face was toward 
me, I thought, for some time, the writing being between us, 
that he could not see me; but looking that way more atten- 
tively, it nade me uncomfortable to observe that, every now 
and then, his sleepless eyes would come below the writing 
like two red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I daresay 
a whole minute at a time, during which his pen went, or 
pretended to go, as cleverly as ever. I made several attempts 
to get out of their way—such as standing on a chair to look 
at a map on the other side of the room, and poring over the 
columns of a Kentish newspaper—but they always attracted 
me back again; and whenever I looked toward those two red 
suns, I was sure to find them, either just rising or just setting. 

At length, much to my relief, my aunt and Mr. Wickfield 
came back, after a pretty long absence. They were not so — 
successful as I could have wished; for though the advantages 
of the school were undeniable, my aunt had not approved of 
any of the boarding-houses proposed for me. 

‘*It’s very unfortunate,’’ said my aunt. ‘‘I don’t know 
what to do, Trot.”’ 

‘‘It does happen unfortunately,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. 
“But Pll tell you what you can do, Miss Trotwood.”’ 

‘‘What’s that?’’ inquired my aunt. 

‘‘Leave your nephew here for the present. He’s a quiet 


266 Works of @harles Diekens 


fellow. He won’t disturb me at all. It’s a capital house ror 
study. As quiee as a monastery, and almost as roomy. 
Leave him here.’ 

My aunt evidently liked the offer, though she was HgHeak’ 
of accepting it. So did I. 

‘‘Come, Miss Trotwood,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘‘This is 
the way out of the difficulty. It’s only a temporary arrange- 
ment, you know. If it don’t act well, or don’t quite accord 
with our mutual convenience, he can easily go to the right 
about. There will be time to find some better place for him 
in the meanwhile. You had better determine to leave him 
here for the present.’’ 

‘‘T am very much obliged to you,’ 
so is he, 1 see; but—’’ 

‘Come! 1 know what you mean,’’ cried Mr. Wickfield. 
‘*You shall not be oppressed by the receipt of favors, Miss 
Trotwood. You may pay for him if you like. We won’t be 
hard about terms, but you shall pay if you will.”’ 

“On that understanding,’’ said my aunt, “‘though it 
doesn’t eee? the real obligation, I shall be very glad to 
leave him.’ 

‘“‘Then come and see my little housekeeper,’’ seid Mr. 
Wickfield. 

We accordingly went up a wonderful old staircase—with 
a balustrade so broad that we might have gone up that almost 
as easily—and into a shady old drawing-room, lighted by 
some three or four of the quaint windows I had looked up 
at from the street, which had old oak seats in them that 
Seemed to have come of the same trees as the shining oak 
floor and the great beams in the ceiling. It was a prettily 
furnished room, with a piano and some lively furniture in 
red and green, and some flowers. It seemed to be all old 
nooks and corners; and in every nook and corner there was 
some queer little table, or cupboard, or bookcase, or seat, or 
something or other that made me think there was not such 
another good corner in the room; until I looked at the next 
one, and found it equal to it, if not better. On everything 


> 


said my aunt; ‘‘and 


David @opperfield 267 


there was the same air of retirement and cleanliness that 
marked the house outside. 

Mr. Wickfield tapped at the door in a corner of the paneled 
wall, and a girl of about my own age came quickly out and 
kissed him. On her face I saw immediately the placid and 
- sweet expression of the lady whose picture had looked at me 
downstairs. It seemed to my imagination as if the portrait 
had grown womanly, and the original remained a child. 
Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was 
a tranquillity about it, and about her—a quiet, good, calm 
spirit —that I never have forgotten, that I never shall forget. 

This was his little housekeeper, his daughter Agnes, Mr. 
Wickfield said. When I heard how he said it, and saw how 
he held her hand, 1 guessed what the one motive of his life 
was. 

She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side, with 
keys in it, and she looked as staid and as discreet a house- 
keeper as the old house could have. She listened to her 
father, as he told her about me, with a pleasant face, and 
when he had concluded proposed to my aunt that we should 
vo upstairs and see my room. We all went together; she 
before us. And a glorious old room it was, with more oak 
beams, and diamond panes, and the broad balustrade going 
all the way up to it. 

I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, 1 
had seen a stained-glass window in a church. Nor do I recol- 
lect its subject. But I know that when I saw her turn round, 
in the grave light of the old staircase, and wait for us, above, 
I thought of that window; and that I associated something 
of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever after- 
ward. 

My aunt was as happy as 1 was, in the arrangement made 
for me; and we went down to the drawing-room again well 
pleased and gratified. As she would not hear of staying to 
dinner, lest she should by any chance fail to arrive at home 
with the gray pony before dark; and as I apprehend Mr. 
Wickfield knew her too well to argue any point with her, 


268 Works of Charles Dickens 


some lunch was provided for her there, and Agnes went back 
tc her governess and Mr. Wickfield to his office. So we were 
left to take leave of one another without any restraint. 

She told me that everything would be arranged for me 
by Mr. Wickfield, and that 1 should want for nothing, and 
cave me the kindest words and the best advice. 

““Trot,’? said my aunt in conclusion, ‘‘be a credit to your- 
self, to me, and Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with you!”’ 

I was greatly overcome, and could only thank her, again 
and again, and send my love to Mr. Dick.. 

‘‘Never,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘be mean in anything; never be 
false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I 
ean always be hopeful of you.”’ 

I promised, as well as 1 could, that I would not abuse her 
kindness or forget her admonition. 

‘*The pony’s at the door,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘and I am off! 
Stay here.’’ 

With these words she embraced me hastily, and went out 
of the room, shutting the door after her. At first I was 
startled by so abrupt a departure, and almost feared I had 
displeased her; but when I looked into the street, and saw 
how dejectedly she got into the chaise, and drove away with- 
out looking up, I understood her better, and did not do her 
that injustice. 

By five o’clock, which was Mr, Wickfield’s dinner-hour, 
I had mustered up my spirits again, and was ready for my 
knife and fork. The cloth was only laid for us two; but 
Agnes was waiting in the drawing-room before dinner, went 
down with her father, and sat opposite to him at table. I 
doubted whether he could have dined without her. 

We did not stay there, after dinner, but came upstairs 
into the drawing-room again; in one snug corner of which 
Agnes set glasses for her father, and a decanter of port 
wine. 1 thought he would have missed its usual flavor if it 
had been put there for him by any other hands. 

There he sat, taking his wine, and taking a good deal of 
it, for two hours, while Agnes played on the piano, worked, 


David Gopperfield 269 


and talked to him and me. He was, for the most part, gay 
and cheerful with us; but sometimes his eyes rested on her, 
and he fell into a brooding state and was silent. She always 
observed this quickly, as I thought, and always roused him 
with a question or caress. Then he came out of his medita- 
tion, and drank more wine. 

Agnes made the tea, and presided over it; and the time 
passed away after it, as after dinner, until she went to bed; 
when her father took her in his arms and kissed her, and, 
she being gone, ordered candles in his office. Then I went 
to bed, too. 

But in the course of the evening I had rambled down to 
. the door, and a little way along the street, that I might have 
another peep at the old houses, and the gray Cathedral; and 
might think of my coming through that old city on my jour- 
ney, and of my passing the very house I lived in, without 
knowing it. As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up 
the office; and feeling friendly toward everybody, wentin and 
spoke to him, and at parting gave him my hand. But oh, 
what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to 
the sight! I rubbed mine afterward, to warm it, and to rub 
his off. 

It was such an uncomfortable hand that, when 1 went to 
my room, it was still cold and wet upon my memory. Lean- 
ing out of window, and seeing one of the faces on the beam- 
ends looking at me sidewise, I fancied it was Uriah Heep got 
up there somehow, and shut him out in a hurry. 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


I AM A NEW BOY IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE 


NEXT morning, after breakfast, 1 entered on school life 
again. I went, accompanied by Mr. Wicktield, to the scene 
of my future studies—a grave building in a courtyard, with 
a learned air about it that seemed very well suited to the 


270 Works of Charles Diekens 


stray rooks and jackdaws who came down from the Cathe. 
dral towers to walk with a clerkly bearing on the grass-plot 
—and was introduced to my new master, Dr. Strong. 

Dr. Strong looked almost as rusty, to my thinking, as the 
tall iron rails and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff 
and heavy as the great stone urns that flanked them, and 
were set up, on the top of the red-brick wall, at regular dis- 
tances all round the court, like sublimated skittles for Time 
to play at. He was in his library (I mean Dr. Strong was), 
with his clothes not particularly well brushed, and his hair 
not particularly well combed; his knee-smalls unbraced, his 
long black gaiters unbuttoned, and his shoes yawning like 
two caverns on the hearth-rug. Turning upon me a luster- 
less eye, that reminded me of a long-forgotten blind old horse 
who once used to crop the grass and tumble over the graves 
in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he was glad to see me; 
and then he gave me his hand, which I didn’t know what to 
do with, as it did nothing for itself. 

But, sitting at work, not far off from Dr. Strong, was a 
very pretty young lady—whom he called Annie, and who was 
his daughter, I supposed—who got me out of my difficulty by 
kneeling down to put Dr. Strong’s shoes on, and button his 
gaiters, which she did with great cheerfulness and quickness. 
When she had finished, and we were going out to the school- 
room, I was much surprised to hear Mr. Wickfield, in bidding 
her good-morning, address her as ‘‘Mrs. Strong’’; and I was 
wondering could she be Dr. Strong’s son’s wife, or could 
she be Mrs. Doctor Strong, when Dr. Strong himself uncon- 
sciously enlightened me. 

‘*By the bye, Wickfield,’’ he said, stopping in a passage 
with his hand on my shoulder, ‘‘you have not found any 
suitable provision for my wife’s cousin yet?’’ 

*“No,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘“‘No. Not yet.’’ 

‘‘] could wish it done as soon as it can be done, Wick. 
field,’’ said Dr. Strong, ‘‘for Jack Maldon is needy and idle; 
and of those two bad things, worse things sometimes come. 
What does Dr. Watts say,’’ he added, looking at me, and 


David Copperfield 271 


moving his head to the time of his quotation, ‘‘ ‘Satan finds 
some mischief still for idle hands to do.’ ”’ 

‘*Head, doctor,’’,. returned Mr. Wickfield, ‘‘if Dr. Watts 
knew mankind, he might have written, with as much truth. 
‘Satan finds some mischief still, for busy hands to do.’ The 
busy people achieve their full share of mischief in the world, 
you may rely upon it. What have the people been about who 
have been the busiest in getting money, and in getting power, 
this century or two? No mischief?”’ 

‘*Jack Maldon will never be very busy in getting either, 
1 expect,’’? said Dr. Strong, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. 

‘‘Perhaps not,’’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘‘and you bring me 
back to the question, with an apology for digressing. No, 
I have not been able to dispose of Mr. Jack Maldon yet. I 
believe,’’ he said this with some hesitation, ‘‘I penetrate your 
motive, and it makes the thing more difficult.’’ 

‘“‘My motive,’’ returned Dr. Strong, ‘‘is to make some 
suitable provision for a cousin, and an old playfellow of 
Annie’s.”’ 

‘“Yes, | know,”’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘‘at home or abroad.”’ 

‘‘Ay!” replied the doctor, apparently wondering why he 
emphasized those words so much. ‘‘At home or abroad.’’ 

‘*Your own expression, you know,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. 
‘*Or abroad.’’ 

“‘Surely,’’ the doctor answered. ‘‘Surely. One or other.’’ 

*‘One or other? Have you no choice?’’ asked Mr. Wick- 
field. 

‘*No,’’ returned the doctor. 

‘*No?”’ with astonishment. 

‘*Not the least.’’ 

‘““No motive,’’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘‘for meaning abroad, 
and not at home?”’ 

‘*No,’’ returned the doctor. 

‘‘T am bound to believe you, and of course 1 do believe 
you,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘‘It might have simplified my 
office very much if I had known it before. But I confess 
I entertained another impression.’”’ 


272 Works of Charles Dickens 


Dr. Strong regarded him with a puzzled and doubting 
look, which almost immediately subsided into a smile that 
gave me great encouragement; for it was full of amiability 
and sweetness, and there was a simplicity in it, and indeed 
in his whole manner, when the studious, pondering frost upon 
it was got through, very attractive and hopeful to a young 
scholar like me. Repeating ‘‘no,’’ and ‘‘not the least,’’ and 
other short assurances to the same purport, Dr. Strong 
jogged on before us, at a queer, uneven pace, and we followed - 
—Mr. Wickfield looking grave, I observed, and shaking his 
head to himself, without knowing that I saw him. 

The schoolroom was a pretty large hali, on the quietest 
side of the house, confronted by the stately stare of some 
half-dozen of the great urns, and commanding a peep of an 
old secluded garden belonging to the doctor, where the 
peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall. There were 
two great aloes, in tubs on the turf outside the windows; the 
broad hard leaves of which plant (looking as if they were 
made of painted tin) have ever since, by association, been 
symbolical to me of silence and retirement. About five-and- 
twenty boys were studiously engaged at their books when we 
went in, but they rose to give the doctor good-morning, and _ 
remained standing when they saw Mr. Wickfield and me. 

‘A new boy, young gentlemen,’’ said the doctor; ‘‘Trot- 
wood Copperfield.”’ : 

One Adams, who was the head-boy, then stepped out of 
his place and welcomed me. He looked like a young clergy- 
man in his white cravat, but he was very affable and good- 
humored; and he showed me my place, and presented me to 
the masters in a gentlemanly way that would have put me at 
my ease if anything could. 

It seemed to me so long, however, since I had been among 
such boys, or among any companions of my own age, except 
Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes, that | felt as strange as 
ever I have done in all my life. Iwasso conscious of having < 
passed through scenes of which they could have no knowl- 
edge, and of having acquired experiences foreign to my age, 


David Gopperfield 273 | 


appearance, and condition as one of them, ‘that I half be- 
lieved it was an imposture to come there as an ordinary little 
schoolboy. 1 had become, in the Murdstone & Grinby time, 
however short or long it may have been, so unused to the 
sports and games of boys, that I knew I was awkward and 
inexperienced in the commonest things belonging to them. 
Whatever I had learned had so slipped away from me in the 
sordid cares of my life from day to night, that now, when 1 
was examined about what 1 knew, 1 knew nothing, and was 
put into the lowest form of the school. But, troubled as 1 
was by my want of boyish skill, and of book-learning, too, 
I was made infinitely more uncomfortable by the considera 
tion that, in what I did know, I was much further removed 
from my companions than in what I did not. My mind ran 
upon what they would think, if they knew of my familiar 
acquaintance with the King’s Bench Prison? Was there 
anything about me which would reveal my proceedings in 
connection with the Micawber family—all those pawnings, 
and sellings, and suppers—in spite of myself? Suppose some 
of the boys had seen me coming through Canterbury, way- 
worn and ragged, and should find me out? What would they 
Say, who made so light of money, if they could know how 1 
scraped my halfpence together, for the purchase of my daily 
saveloy and beer, or my slices of pudding? How would it 
affect them, who were so innocent of London life and Lon- 
don streets, to discover how knowing I was (aud was ashamed 
to be) in some of the meanest phases of both? All this ran in 
my head so much, on that first day at Dr. Strong’s, that I 
felt distrustful of my slightest look and gesture; shrunk 
within myself whensoever I was approached by one of my 
new schoolfellows, and hurried off the minute school was 
over, afraid of committing myself in my response to any 
friendly notice or advance. 

But there was such an influence in Mr. Wickfield’s old 
house that when 1 knocked at it, with my new school books 
under my arm, I began to feel my uneasiness softening away. 
As I went up to my airy old room the grave shadow of the 


QV Works of Charles Diekens 


staircase seemed to fall upon my doubts and fears and to make 
the past more indistinct. I sat there, sturdily conning my 
books, until dinner time (we were out of school for good at 
three), and went down, hopeful of becoming a passable sort 
of boy yet. 

Agnes was in the drawing-room, waiting for her father, 

who was detained by some one in his office. She met me 
with her pleasant smile, and asked me how I liked the school. 
I told her I should like it very much, 1 hoped; but I was a 
little strange to it at first. 

‘‘ You have never been to school,’’ I said, ‘Shave you?’’ 

‘‘Oh, yes! Every day.’’ 

‘Ah, but you mean here, at your own home??’’ 

‘‘Papa couldn’t spare me to go anywhere else,’’ she an- 
swered, smiling and shaking her head. ‘‘His housekeeper 
must be in his house, you know.”’ 

‘*He is very fond of you, I am sure,’’ I said. 

She nodded ‘‘ Yes,’’ and went to the door to listen for his 
coming up, that she might meet him on the stairs. But, as 
he was not there, she came back again. 

‘‘Mama has been dead ever since I was born,’’ she said, 
in her quiet way. ‘‘I only know her picture, downstairs. I 
saw you looking at it yesterday. Did you think whose it 
was?’’ 1 told her yes, because it was so like herself. 

‘‘Papa says so, too,’’ said Agnes, pleased. ‘*‘Hark! 
That’s papa now?’’ 

Her bright calm face lighted up with pleasure as she went 
to meet him, and as they came in, hand in hand. He greeted 
me cordially, and told me I should certainly be alg under 
Dr. Strong, who was one of the gentlest of men. 

‘‘There may be some, perhaps—I don’t know that there 
are—who abuse his kindness,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘‘ Never 
be one of those, Trotwood, in anything. He is the least sus- 
picious of mankind; and whether that’s a merit, or whether 
it’s a blemish, it deserves consideration in all dealings with 
the doctor, great or small.’’ 

He spoke, I thought, as if he were weary or dissatisfied 


David Copperfield 275 


with something; but I did not pursue the question in my 
mind, for dinner was just then announced, and we went 
down and took the same seats as before. 

We had scarcely done so when Uriah Heep put in his red 
head and his lank hand at the door, and said: 

‘‘Here’s Mr. Maldon begs the favor of a word, sir.”’ 

*‘T am but this moment quit of Mr. Maldon,’’ said his 
master. | 

‘*Yes, sir,’’? returned Uriah; ‘‘but Mr. Maldon has come 
back, and he begs the favor of a word.”’ 

As he held the door open with his hand, Uriah looked at 
me, and looked at Agnes, and looked at the dishes, and looked 
at the plates, and looked at every object in the room, | thought 
—yet seemed to look at nothing; he made such an appearance 
all the while of keeping his red eyes dutifully on his master. 

“I beg your pardon. It’s only to say, on reflection,’’ ob- 
served a voice behind Uriah, as Uriah’s head was pushed 
away and the speaker’s substituted—‘‘pray excuse me for 
this intrusion—that as it seems | have no choice in the mat- 
ter, the sooner I go abroad the better. My cousin Annie did 
say, when we talked of it, that she liked to have her friends 
within reach rather than to have them banished, and the old 
doctor—”’ 

“Dr. Strong, was that??? Mr. Wickfield interposed, 
eravely. 

‘**Dr. Strong, of course,’’ returned the other; ‘‘1 call him 
the old doctor—it’s all the same, you know.”’ 

**1 don’t know,’’ returned Mr. Wickfield. 

“Well, Dr. Strong,’’ said the other—‘‘Dr. Strong was of 
the same mind, [ believed. Butas it appears from the course 
you take with me that he has changed his mind, why, there’s 
no more to be said, except that the sooner I am off the better. 
Therefore, I thought I’d come back and say that the sooner 
1 am off the better. When a plunge is to be made into the 
water, it’s of no use lingering on the bank.”’ 

‘‘There shall.be as little lingering as possible, in your case, 
Mr. Maldon, you may depend upon it,’’ said Mr. Wickfield. 


) 


276 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘“Thank’ee,’’ said the other. ‘‘Much obliged. I don’t 
want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, which is not a gra- 
cious thing to do; otherwise, I daresay, my cousin Annie 
could easily arrange it in her own way. I suppose Annie 
would only have to say to the old doctor—’’ 

‘‘Meaning that Mrs. Strong would only have to say to her 
husband—do I follow you?”’ said Mr. Wickfield. 

‘“Quite so,’’ returned the other, ‘‘—would only have to say 
that she wanted such and such a thing to be so and so; and 
it would be so and so, as a matter of course.”’ 

‘““And why as a matter of course, Mr. Maldon?” asked 
Mr. Wickfield, sedately eating his dinner. 

‘‘Why, because Annie’s a charming young girl, and the 
old doctor—Dr. Strong, I mean—is not quite a charming 
young boy,’’ said Mr. Jack Maldon, laughing. ‘‘No offense 
to anybody, Mr. Wickfield. I only mean that I suppose 
somo Sogn ae is fair and reasonable in that sort of 
marriage. ’ 

‘‘Compensation to the lady, sir?”’ ee Mr. Wickfield, 
gravely. 

‘“To the lady, sir,’? Mr. Jack Maldon answered, laughing. 
But appearing to remark that Mr. Wickfield went on with his © 
dinner in the same sedate, immovable manner, and that there 
was no hope of making him relax a muscle of his face, he 
added : 

‘‘However, I have said what 1 came back to say, and, 
with another apology for this intrusion, | may take myself 
off. Of course I shall observe your directions, in considering 
the matter as one to be arranged between you and me solely, 
and not to be referred to, up at the doctor’s.”’ 

‘‘Have you dined?’’ asked Mr. Wickfield, with a motion 
of his hand toward the table. 

‘‘Thank’ee. Iam going to dine,’’ said Mr. Maldon, ‘‘with 
my cousin Annie. Good-by!”’ 

Mr. Wickfield, without rising, looked after him thought- 
fully as he went out. Hewas rather a shallow sort of young 
gentleman, 1 thought, with a handsome face, a rapid utter- 


David Gopperfield 277 


ance, and a confident, bold air. And this was the first I ever 
saw of Mr. Jack Maldon, whom I had not expected to see so 
soon, when I heard the doctor speak of him that morning. 

When we had dined, we went upstairs again, where every- 
thing went on exactly as on the previous day. Agnes set the 
glasses and decanters in the same corner, and Mr. Wickfield 
sat down to drink, and drank a good deal. Agnes played the 
piano to him, sat by him, and worked and talked, and played 
some games at dominoes with me. In good time she made tea, 
and afterward, when I brought down my books, looked into 
them, and showed me what she knew of them (which was no 
slight matter, though she said it was), and what was the best 
way to learn and understand them. 1 see her, with her mod- 
est, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her beautiful calm voice, 
as 1 write these words. The influence for all good, which 
she came to exercise over me at a later time, begins already 
to descend upon my breast. I love little Hm’ly, and I don’t 
love Agnes—no, not at all in that way—but I feel that there 
are goodness, peace, and truth wherever Agnes is; and that 
the soft light of the colored window in the church, seen long > 
ago, falls on her always, and on me when I am near her, and 
on everything around. 

The time having come for her withdrawal for the night, 
and she having left us, I gave Mr. Wickfield my hand, pre- 
paratory to going away myself. But he checked me and 
said: ‘“‘Should you like to stay with us, Trotwood, or to go 
elsewhere?”’ 

‘“To stay,’’ 1 answered, quickly. 

‘*You are sure?”’ 

“If you please. If I may 

‘Why, it’s but a dull life that we lead here, boy, I am 
afraid,”’ he said. 

‘‘Not more. dull for me than Agnes, sir. Not dull at all!’ 

‘‘Than Agnes,’’ he repeated, walking slowly to the great 
chimney-piece, and leaning against it. ‘‘Than Agnes!’’ 

He had drank wine that evening (or I fancied it), until 
his eyes were bloodshot. Not that 1 could see them now, for 


19? 


278 Works of @harles Dickens 


they were cast down and shaded by his hand; but I had 
noticed them a little while before. 

‘‘Now I wonder,’’ he muttered, ‘‘whether my Agnes tires 
of me. When should I ever tire of her! But that’s different 
—that’s quite different.’’ 

He was musing—not speaking tome; sol remained quiet. 

‘*A dull old house,’’ he said, ‘‘and a monotonous life; but 
I must have her near me. I must keep her near me. If the 
thought that I may die and leave my darling, or that my 
darling may die and leave me, comes like a specter to distress 
my happiest hours, and is only to be drowned in—’’ 

He did not supply the word; but pacing slowly to the place 
where he had sat, and mechanically going through the action 
of pouring wine from the empty decanter, set it down and 
paced back again. 

‘‘If it is miserable to bear when she is here,”’ he said, 
‘‘what would it be and she away? No, no, no. I cannot 
try that.’’ 

He leaned against the chimney-piece, brooding so long 
that I could not decide whether to run the risk of disturbing 
him by going, or to remain quietly where 1 was until he 
should come out of his reverie. At length he roused him- 
self, and looked about the room until his eyes encountered 
mine. 

‘Stay with us, Trotwood, eh?’’ he said in his usual man- 
ner, and as if he were answering something I had just said. 
‘‘T am glad of it. Youare company to us both. It is whole- 
some to have you here. Wholesome for me, wholesome for 
Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of us.”’ 

‘*] am sure it is for me, sir,’’ I said. ‘‘l amso glad to be 
here.”’ . 

“That’s a fine fellow!’’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘‘As long 
as you are glad to be here, you shall stay here.’’ He shook 
hands with me upon it, and clapped me on the back, and told - 
me that when I had anything to do at night after Agnes had 
left us, or when I wished to read for my own pleasure, I was 
free to come down to his room, if he were there, and if I de- 


David Copperfield 279 


sired it for company’s sake, and to sit with him. I thanked 
him for his consideration; and, as he went down soon after- 
ward, and I was not tired, went down too, with a book in my 
hand, to avail myself for half-an-hour of his permission. 

But, seeing a light in the little round office, and imme- 
diately feeling myself attracted toward Uriah Heep, who had 
a sort of fascination for me, I went in there instead. I found 
Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative at- 
tention that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he 
read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so 1 fully 
believed) like a snail. 

‘*You are working late to-night, Uriah,’’ says I. 

**Yes, Master Copperfield,’’ says Uriah. 

As I was getting on the stool opposite, to talk to him more 
conveniently, I observed that he had not such a thing as a 
smile about him, and that he could only widen his mouth 
and make two hard creases down his cheeks, one on each 
side, to stand for one. 

“‘T am not doing office-work, Master Copperfield,’’ said 
Uriah. 

“‘What work then?’’ I asked. 

*‘T am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copper- 
field,’? said Uriah. ‘‘I am going through Tidd’s Practice. 
Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master Copperfield !’’ 

My stool was such a tower of observation that as I watched 
him reading on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and 
following up the lines with his forefinger, 1 observed that his 
nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp dints in 
them, had a singular and most uncomfortable way of expand- 
ing and contracting themselves—that they seemed to twinkle 
instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all. 

‘“‘T suppose you are quite a great lawyer?’’ I said, after 
looking at him for some time. 

‘“Me, Master Copperfield?”’ said Uriah. ‘“‘Oh, no! Pm 
a very ’umble person.”’ 

* Jt was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for 
he frequently ground the palms against each other as if to 


280 Works of Charles Dickens 


squeeze them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in 
a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief. 

‘‘T am well aware that 1 am the ’umblest person going,”’ 
said Uriah Heep, modestly; ‘‘let the other be where he may. 
My mother is likewise a very ’umble person. We live in an 
’umble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thank- 
ful for. My father’s former calling was ’umble. He was 
a sexton.”’ 

‘What is he now?’’ I asked. | 

‘He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield,”’ 
said Uriah Heep. ‘‘But we have much to be thankful for. 
How much have 1 to be thankful for in living with Mr. 
Wickfield!’’ 

I asked Uriah if he had been with Mr. Wickfield 
long ? 

‘‘T have been with him going on four year, Master Cop- 
perfield,’’? said Uriah, shutting up his book, after carefully 
marking the place where he had left off. ‘‘Since a year after 
my father’s death. How much have I to be thankful for in 
that! How much have I to be thankful for in Mr. Wick- 
field’s kind intention to give me my articles, which would 
otherwise not lay within the ’umble means of mother and 
self !’’ | 

‘*Then, when your articled time is over, you’ll be a regular 
lawyer, I suppose?’’ said lL. 

‘‘With the blessing of Providence, Master Copperfield,”’ 
returned Uriah. — 

‘*Perhaps you'll be a partner in Mr. Wickfield’s business 
one of these days,’’ I said, to make myself agreeable; ‘‘and 
it will be Wickfield & Heep, or Heep, late Wickfield.”’ 

*‘Oh, no, Master Copperfield,’’ returned Uriah, shaking 
his head, ‘‘I am much too ’umble for that!’’ 

He certainly did look uncommonly like the carved face on 
the beam outside my window, as he sat, in his humility, eying 
me sidewise, with his mouth widened and the creases in his 
cheeks. | ; 

‘‘Mr. Wickfield is a most excellent man, Master Copper- 


David Gopperfield p+ =281 


field,’’? said Uriah. ‘“‘If you have known him long, you know 
it, lam sure, much better than I can inform you.”’ 

I replied that I was certain he was; but that I had not 
known him long myself, though he was a friend of my aunt’s. 

“‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield,” said Uriah. ‘‘Your 
aunt is a sweet lady, Master Copperfield !’’ 

He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express 
enthusiasm, which was very ugly, and which diverted my 


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’ 


‘““OH, THANK YOU, MASTER COPPERFIELD,’ SAID URIAH HEEP 


attention from the compliment he had paid my relation to 
the snaky twisting of his throat and body. 

“*A sweet lady, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah Heep. 
‘She has a great admiration for Miss Agnes, Master Copper- 
field, I believe?”’ 

1 said ‘‘ Yes,’’ boldly; not that 1 knew anything about it, 
Heaven forgive me! | 

**T hope you have, too, Master Copperfield,’* said Uriah. 
‘*But [ am sure you must have.”’ 


282 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘Hverybody must have,’’ I returned. 

‘‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’’ said Uriah Eseyi 
‘‘for that remark! It is so true! ’Umble as I am, I know 
it is so true! Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield!’’ 

He writhed himself quite off his stool in the excitement of 
his feelings, and, being off, began to make arrangements for 
going home.: 

‘‘Mother will be expecting me,’’ he said, referring to a 
pale, inexpressive-faced watch in his pocket, ‘‘and getting 
uneasy; for though we are very ’umble, Master Copperfield, 
we are much atiached to one another. If you would come 
and see us, any afternoon, and take a cup of tea at our lowly 
dwelling, mother would be as proud of your company as I 
should be.”’ 

I said I should be glad to come. 

‘Thank you, Master Copperfield,’’ returned Uriah, put- 
ting his book away upon a. shelf—‘‘I suppose you stop here 
some time, Master Copperfield ?’’ 

I said I was going to be brought up there, I believed, as 
long as I remained at school. 

‘‘Oh, indeed!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘‘I should think you 
would come into the business at last, Master Copperfield !’’ 

I protested that I had no views of that sort, and that no 
such scheme was entertained in my behalf by anybody; but 
Uriah insisted on blandly replying to all my assurances, ‘*Oh, 
yes, Master Copperfield, I should think you would, indeed!” 
and, ‘‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield, I should think you 
. would, certainly!’ over and over again. Being, at last, 
ready to leave the office for the night, he asked meif it would 
suit my convenience to have the light put out; and on my 
answering ‘‘Yes,’’ instantly extinguished it. After shaking 
hands with me—his hand felt like a fish in the dark—he 
opened the door into the street a very little and crept out, 
and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into the house, 
which cost me some trouble and a fall over his stool. This was 
the proximate cause, 1 suppose, of my dreaming about him, 
for what appeared to me to be half the night; and dreaming, 


David Gopperfield 283 


among other things, that he had launched Mr. Peggotty’s 
house on a,piratical expedition, with a black flag at the mast- 
head, bearing the inscription ‘‘Tidd’s Practice,’’? under which 
diabolical ensign he was carrying me and little Km’ly to the 
Spanish Main to be drowned. 

I got a little the better of my uneasiness when I went to 
school next day, and a good deal the better next day, and so 
shook it off by degrees that in less than- a fortnight I was 
quite at home, and happy among my new companions. Il 
was awkward enough in their games, and backward enough 
in their studies; but custom would improve me in the first 
respect, I hoped, and hard work in the second. Accordingly, 
I went to work very hard, both in play and in earnest, and 
gained great commendation. And ina very little while the 
Murdstone & Grinby life became so strange to me that lL 
hardly believed in it, while my present life grew so familiar 
that I seemed to have been leading it a long time. 

Dr. Strong’s was ‘an excellent school; as different from 
Mr. Creakle’s as good is from evil. It was very gravely and 
decorously ordered, and on a sound system, witb an appeal, 
in everything, to the honor and good faith of the boys, and 
an avowed intention to rely on their possession of those quali- 
ties unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which 
worked wonders. We all felt that we had a part in the man- 
agement of the place, and in sustaining its character and 
dignity. Hence, we soon became warmly attached to it— 
1 am sure [ did for one, and 1] never knew, in all my time, 
of any other boy being otherwise—and learned with ‘a good 
will, desiring to do it credit. We had noble games out of 
hours, and plenty of liberty; but even then, as I remember, 
we were well spoken of in the town, and rarely did any dis- 
grace, by our appearance or manner, to the ay oes of Dr. 
Strong and Dr. Strong’s boys. 

Some of the higher scholars boarded in the doctor’s house, 
and through them I learned, at second hand, some particulars 
of the doctor’s history—as how he had not yet been married 
twelve months to the beautiful young lady I had seen in the 


284 Works of Charles Dickens 


study, whom he had married for love; as she had not a six- 
pence, and had a world of poor relations (so our fellows said) 
ready to swarm the doctor out of house and home. Also, how 
the doctor’s cogitating manner was attributable to his being 
always engaged in looking out for Greek roots, which, in my 
innocence and ignorance, I supposed to be a botanical furor 
on the doctor’s part, especially as he always looked at the 
ground when he walked about, until I understood that they 
were roots of words, with a view to a new Dictionary which 
he had in contemplation. Adams, our head-boy, who had 
a turn for mathematics, had made a calculation, I was in- 
formed, of the time this Dictionary would take in completing, 
on the doctor’s plan, and at the doctor’s rate of going. He 
considered that it might be done in one thousand six hundred 
and forty-nine years, counting from the doctor’s last, or sixty- 
second, birthday. 

But the doctor himself was the idol of the whole school; 
and it must have been a badly composed school if he had been 
anything else, for he was the kindest of men, with a simple 
faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the 
very urns upon the wall. As he walked up and down that 
part of the courtyard which was at the side of the house—with 
the stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with their 
heads cocked slyly, as if they knew how much more knowing 
they were in worldly affairs than he—if any sort of vagabond - 
could only get near enough to his creaking shoes to attract 
his attention to one sentence of a tale of distress, that vaga- 
bond was made for the next two days. lt was so notorious 
in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to 
cut these marauders off at angles, and to get out of windows 
and turn them out of the courtyard before they could make 
the doctor aware of their presence; which was sometimes 
happily effected: within a few yards of him, without his 
knowing anything of the matter, as he jogged to and fro. 
Outside his own. domain, and unprotected, he was a very 
sheep for the shearers. He would have taken his gaiters off 
his legs to give away. In fact, there was a story current 


David Ropperfield 285 


among us (I have no idea, and never had, on what authority, 
but 1 have believed it for so many years that I feel quite cer- 
tain it is true), that on a frosty day, one winter time, he actu- 
ally did bestow his gaiters on a beggar-woman, who occasioned 
some scandal in the neighbohood by exhibiting a fine infant 
from door to door, wrapped in those garments, which were 
universally recognized, being as well known in the vicinity 
as the Cathedral. The legend added that the only person 
who did not identify them was the doctor himself, who, when 
they were shortly afterward displayed at the door of a little 
second-hand shop of no very good repute, where such things 
were taken in exchange for gin, was more than once observed 
to handle them approvingly, as if admiring some curious nov- 
elty in the pattern, and considering them an improvement on 
his own. 

It was very pleasant to see the doctor with his pretty young 
wife. He had a fatherly, benignant way of showing his fond- 
ness for her, which seemed in itself to express a good man. 
I often saw them walking in the garden where the peaches 
were, and I sometimes had a nearer observation of them in 
the study or the parlor. She appeared to me to take great 
care of the doctor, and to like him very much, though I never 
thought her vitally interested in the Dictionary; some cum- 
brous fragments of which work the doctor always carried in 
his pockets, and in the lining of his hat, and generally seemed 
to be expounding to her as they walked about 

I saw a good deal of Mrs. Strong, both because she had 
taken a liking for me on the morning of my introduction to 
the doctor, and was always afterward kind to me, and inter- 
ested in me; and because she was very fond of Agnes, and 
was often backward and forward at our house. There was 
a curious constraint between her and Mr. Wickfield, lL 
thought (of whom she seemed to be afraid), that never 
wore off. When she came there of an evening, she always 
shrunk from accepting his escort home, and ran away with 
me instead. And sometimes, as we were running gayly 
across the Cathedral yard together, expecting to meet no- 


286 Works of Charles Dickens 


body, we would meet Mr. Jack Maldon, who was always 
surprised to see us. | 

Mrs. Strong’s mama was a lady I took great delight in. 
Her name was Mrs. Markleham; but our boys used to call 
her the Old Soldier, on account of her generalship, and the 
skill with which she marshaled great forces of relations 
against the doctor. She was a little, sharp-eyed woman, 
who used to wear, when she was dressed, one unchangeable 
cap, ornamented with some artificial flowers and two arti- 
ficial butterflies supposed to be hovering above the flowers. 
There was a superstition among us that this cap had come 
from France, and could only originate in the workmanship 
of that ingenious nation; but all I certainly knew about it 
is that it always made its appearance of an evening, whereso- 
ever Mrs. Markleham made her appearance; that it was car- 
ried about to friendly meetings in a Hindoo basket; that the 
butterflies had the gift of trembling constantly, and that they 
improved the shining hours at Dr. Strong’s expense, like busy 
bees. 

I observed the Old Soldier—not to adopt the name disre- 
spectfully—to pretty good advantage, on a night which is 
made memorable to me by something else I shall relate. It 
was the night of a little party at the doctor’s, which was 
given on the occasion of Mr. Jack Maldon’s departure for 
India, whither he was going as a cadet, or something of that 
kind—Mr. Wickfield having at length arranged the business. 
It happened to be the doctor’s birthday, too. We had had 
a holiday, had made presents to him in the morning, had 
made a speech to him through the head-boy, and had cheered 
him until we were hoarse, and until he had shed tears. And 
now, in the evening, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I went to 
have tea with him in his private capacity. 

Mr. Jack Maldon was there before us. Mrs. Strong, 
dressed in white, with cherry-colored ribbons, was playing 
the piano when we went in, and he was leaning over her to 
turn the leaves. The clear red and white of her complexion 
was not so blooming and flower-like as usual, 1 thought, 


David opperfield 287 


when she turned round; but she looked very pretty, wonder- 
fully pretty. . 

‘“*1 have forgotten, doctor,’’ said Mrs. Strong’s mama, 
when we were seated, ‘‘to pay you the compliments of the 
day—though they are, as you may suppose, very far from 
being mere compliments in my case. Allow me to wish you 
many happy returns.’ 

*‘T thank you, ma’am,”’ replied the doctor. 

*“*Many, many, many happy returns,’’ said the Old Soldier. 
‘‘Not only for your own sake, but for Annie’s, and John 
Maldon’s, and many other people’s. It seems but yester- 
day to me, John, when you were a little creature, a head 
shorter than Master Copperfield, making baby love to Annie 
behind the gooseberry bushes in the back-garden.”’ 

‘‘My dear mama,’’ said Mrs. Strong, ‘‘never mind that 
now.”’ 

** Annie, don’t be absurd,’’ returned her mother. ‘‘If you 
are to blush to hear of such things, now you are an old mar: 
ried woman, when are you not to blush to hear of them?”’ 

*‘Old?”’ exclaimed Mr. Jack Maldon. ‘‘ Annie? Come?’’ 

‘‘Yes, John,”’ returned the Soldier. ‘‘ Virtually an old 
married woman. Although not old by years—for when did 
you ever hear me say, or who has ever heard me say, that 
a girl of twenty was old by years!—your cousin is the wife 
of the doctor, and, as such, what I have described her. It 
is well for you, John, that your cousin vs the wife of the 
doctor. You have found in him an influential and kind 
friend, who will be kinder yet, I venture to predict, if you 
deserve it. I have no false pride. I never hesitate to admit, 
frankly, that there are some members of our family who 
want a friend. You were one yourself before your cousin’s 
‘influence raised up one for you.”’ 

The doctor, in the goodness of his heart, waved his hand 
as if to make light of it, and save Mr. Jack Maldon from 
any further reminder. But Mrs. Markleham changed her 
chair for one next the doctor’s, and putting her fan on his 
coat-sleeve, said: 


288 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘“No, really, my dear doctor, you must excuse me if | 
appear to dwell on this rather, because I feel so very strongly. 
I call it quite my monomania, it is such a subject of mine. 
You are a blessing to us. You really are a boon, you 
know.’’ 

‘‘Nonsense, nonsense,’’ said the doctor. 

‘‘No, no, I beg your pardon,’’ retorted the Old Soldier. 
‘*With nobody present but our dear and confidential friend 
Mr. Wickfield, 1 cannot consent to be put down. I shall 
begin to assert the privileges of a mother-in-law, if you go 
on like that, and scold you. I am perfectly honest and out- 
spoken. What I am saying is what I said when you first 
overpowered me with surprise—you remember how surprised 
I was?—by proposing for Annie. Not that there was any- 
thing so very much out of the way, in the mere fact of the 
proposal—it would be ridiculous to say that!—but because 
you, having known her poor father and having known her 
from a baby six months old, I hadn’t thought of you in such 
a light at all, or indeed as a marrying man in any way— 
simply that, you know.’’ 

‘‘Ay, ay,’’ returned the doctor, good-humoredly. ‘‘ Never 
mind.’’ 

‘‘But I do mind,’’ said the Old Soldier, laying her fan 
upon his lips. ‘‘I mind very much. I recall these things 
that I may be contradicted if 1am wrong. Well! Then I 
spoke to Annie, and 1 told her what had happened. I said 
‘My dear, here’s Dr. Strong has positively been and made 
you the subject of a handsome declaration and an offer.’ 
Did 1 press it in the least? No. I said, ‘Now, Annie, tell 
me the truth this moment; is your heart free?’ ‘Mama,’ 
she said, crying, ‘l am extremely young’—which was per- 
fectly true—‘and I hardly know if I have a heart at all.’ 
‘Then, my dear,’ I said, ‘you may rely upon it, it’s free. 
At all events, my love,’ said I, ‘Dr. Strong is in an agitated 
state of mind, and must be answered. He cannot be kept in 
his present state of suspense.’ ‘Mama,’ said Annie, still 
erying, ‘would he be unhappy without me? If he would, 


David Gopperfield 289 


I honor and respect him so much that 1 think i will have 
him.’ So it was settled. And then, and not till then, I said 
to Annie: ‘Annie, Dr. Strong will not only be your husband, 
but he will represent your late father: he will represent the 
head of our family, he will represent the wisdom and sta- 
tion, and I maysay the means, of our family; and will be, 
in short, a Boon to it.’ 1 used the word at the time, and 
I have used it again, to-day. If I have any merit it is con- 
sistency.’”’ 

The daughter had sat quite silent and still during this 
speech, with her eyes fixed on the ground; her cousin stand- 
ing near her, and looking on the ground, too. She now said, 
very softly, in a trembling voice: 

**Marna, I hope you have finished ?”’ 

‘‘No, my dear Annie,’’ returned the Soldier, ‘‘I have not 
quite finished. Since you ask me, my love, [ reply that I 
have not. I complain that you really are a little unnatural 
toward your own family; and, as it is of no use complaining 
to you, 1 mean to complain to your husband. Now, my dear 
doctor, do look at that silly wife of yours.”’ 

As the doctor turned his kind face, with its smile of sim- 
plicity and gentleness, toward her, she drooped her head 
more. 1 noticed that Mr. Wickfield looked at her steadily. 

‘*When I happened to say to that naughty thing, the other 
day,’’ pursued her mother, shaking her head and her fan at 
her playfully, ‘“‘that there was a family circumstance she 
might mention to you—indeed, | think, was bound to men- 
tion—she said; that to mention it was to ask a favor; and 
that, as you were too generous, and as for her to ask was 
always to have, she wouldn’t.’”’ 

‘*Annie, my dear,’’ said the doctor. ‘‘That was wrong. 
It robbed me of a pleasure.”’ 

‘*Almost the very words I said to her!’ exclaimed her 
mother. ‘‘Now, really, another time, when I know what she 
would tell you but for this reason, and won’t, [ have a great 
mind, my dear doctor, to tell you myself.’’ 

**] shall be glad if you will,’’ returned the doctor. 

Vou. II—(10) 


290 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘*Shall [?”? 

‘*Certainly.’”’ 

*‘Well, then, I will!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘‘That’s a 
bargain.’? And having, I suppose, carried her point, she 
tapped the doctor’s hand several times with her fan (which she | 
kissed first), and returned triumphantly to her former station. 

Some more company coming in, among whom were the 
two masters and Adams, the talk became general; and it 
naturally turned on Mr. Jack Maldon, and his voyage, and 
the country he was going to, and his various plans and 
prospects. He was to leave that night, after supper, in a 
post-chaise, for Gravesend, where the ship in which he was 
to make the voyage lay; and was to be gone—unless he came 
home on leave, or for his health—I don’t know how many 
years. I recollect it was settled by general consent that 
India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing 
objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the 
warm part of the day. For my own part, I looked on Mr. 
Jack Maldon as a modern Sinbad, and pictured him the 
bosom friend of all the Rajahs in the East, sitting under 
canopies, smoking curly golden pipes—a mile long, if they 
could be straightened out. 

Mrs. Strong was a very pretty singer; as I knew, who 
often heard her singing by herself. But, whether she was 
afraid of singing before people, or was out of voice that 
evening, it was certain that she couldn’t sing at all. She 
tried a duet, once, with her cousin Maldon, but could not so 
much as begin; and afterward, when she tried to sing by 
herself, although she began sweetly, her voice died away 
on a sudden, and left her quite distressed, with her head 
hanging down over the keys. The good doctor said she was 
nervous, and, to relieve her, proposed a round game at cards, 
of which he knew as much as of the art of playing the trom- 
bone. But I remarked that the Old Soldier took him into 
custody directly, for her partner, and instructed him, as the 
first preliminary of initiation, to give her all the silver he had 
in his pocket. 


David Gopperfield 291 


We had a merry game, not made the less merry by the 
doctor’s mistakes, of which he committed an innumerable 
quantity, in spite of the watchfuiness of the butterflies, and 
to their great aggravation. Mrs. Strong had declined to 
play, on the ground of not feeling very well, and her cousin 
Maldon had excused himself because he had some packing to 
do. When he had done it, however, he returned, and they 
sat together, talking, on the sofa. From time to time she 
came and looked over the doctor’s hand, and told him what 
to play. She was very pale, as she bent over him, and 1 
thought her finger trembled as she pointed out the cards; 
but the doctor was quite happy in her attention, and took 
no notice of this, if it were so. 

At supper we were hardly so gay. Every one appeared 
to feel that a parting of that sort was an awkward thing, 
and that the nearer it approached the more awkward it was. 
Mr. Jack Maldon tried to ‘be very talkative; but was not at 
his ease, and made matters worse. And they were not im- 
proved, as it appeared to me, by the Old Soldier, who con- 
tinually recalled passages of Mr. Jack Maldon’s youth. 

The doctor, however, who felt, I am sure, that he was 
making everybody happy, was well pleased, and had no 
suspicion but that we were all at the utmost height of 
enjoyment. 

‘‘Annie, my dear,’’ said he, looking at his watch, and 
filling his glass, ‘‘it is past your cousin Jack’s time, and 
we inust not-detain him, since time and tide—both concerned 
in this case—wait for no man. Mr. Jack Maldon, you have 
a long voyage and a strange country before you; but many 
men have had both, and many men will have both, to the end 
of time. The winds you are going to tempt have wafted 
thousands upon thousands to fortune, and brought thousands 
upon thousands happily back.’’ 

‘*1t’s an affecting thing,’’ said Mrs. Markleham—‘‘how- 
ever it’s viewed, it’s affecting—to see a fine young man one 
has known from an infant, going away to the other end of 
the world, leaving all he knows behind, and not knowing 


y) 


292 Works of Charles Diekens 


what’s before him. A young man really well deserves con- 
stant support and patronage,’’ looking at the doctor, ‘‘who 
makes such sacrifices.’ 

‘‘Time will go fast with you, Mr. Jack Maldon,’’ pursued 
the doctor, ‘‘and fast with all of us. Some of us can hardly 
expect, perhaps, in the natural course of things, to greet you 
on your return. The next best thing is to hope to do it, and 
that’s my case. I shall not weary you with good advice. 
You have long had a good model before you in your cousin 
Annie. Imitate her virtues as nearly as you can.”’ 

Mrs. Markleham fanned herself, and shook her head. 

‘‘Harewell, Mr. Jack,’’ said the doctor, standing up; on 
which we all stood up. ‘‘A prosperous voyage out, a thriv- 
ing career abroad, and a happy return home!”’ 

We all drank the toast, and all shook hands with Mr. Jack 
Maldon; after which he hastily took leave of the ladies who 
were there, and hurried to the door, where he was received, 
as he got into the chaise, with a tremendous broadside of 
cheers discharged by our boys, who had assembled on the 
lawn for the purpose. Running in among them to swell the 
ranks, I was very near the chaise when it rolled away, and 
I had a lively impression made upon me, in the midst of the 
noise and dust, of having seen Mr. Jack Maldon rattle past 
with an agitated face, and something cherry-colored in his 
hand. 

After another broadside for the doctor, and another for 
the doctor’s wife, the boys dispersed, and 1 went back into 
the house, where I found the guests all standing in a group 
about the doctor, discussing how Mr..Jack Maldon had gone 
away, and how he had borne it, and how he had felt, and all 
the rest of it. In the midst of these remarks Mrs. Markle- 
ham cried: ‘‘Where’s Annie?”’ 

No Annie was there; and when they called to her, no 
Annie replied. But all pressing out of the room, in a crowd, 
to see what was the matter, we found her lying on the hall 
floor. There was great alarm at first, until it was found that 
she was in a s\voon, and that the swoon was yielding to the 


David Copperfield 293 


usual means of recovery; when the doctor, who had lifted 
her head upon his knee, put her curls aside with his hand, 
and said, looking around: 

‘*Poor Annie! She’s so faithful and tender-hearted! It’s 
the parting from her old playfellow and friend—her favorite 
cousin—that has done this. Ah! It’s a pity! I am very 
sorry !”’ 

When she opened her eyes, and saw where she was, and 
that we were all standing about her, she arose with assistance; 
turning her head, as she did so, to lay it on the doctor’s 
shoulder—or to hide it, I don’t know which. We went into 
the drawing-room, to leave her with the doctor and her mo- 
ther; but she said, it seemed, that she was better than she 
had been since morning, and that she would rather be 
brought among us; so they brought her in, looking very 
white and weak, I thought, and sat her on a sofa. 

‘Annie, my dear,’’ said her mother, doing something 
to her dress. ‘‘See here! You have lost a bow. Will 
anybody be so good as find a ribbon, a cherry-colored 
ribbon ?”’ 

It was the one she had worn at her bosom. We all looked 
for it—I myself looked everywhere, Iam certain—but nobody 
could find it. 

*‘Do you recollect where you had it last, Annie?’’ said 
her mother. 

1 wondered how I could have thought she looked white, 
or anything but burning red, when she answered that she had 
had it safe, a little while ago, she thought, but it was not 
worth looking for. 

Nevertheless, it was looked for again, and still not found. 
She entreated that there might be no more searching; but it 
was stilll sought for in a desultory way, until she was quite 
well, and the company took their departure. 

We walked very slowly home, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and 
I—Agnes and I admiring the moonlight, and Mr. Wickfield 
scarcely raising his eyes from the ground. When we, at 
last, reached our own door, Agnes discovered that she had 


294 Works of Charles Dickens 


left her little reticule behind. Delighted to be of aly ser- 
vice to her, I ran back to fetch it. 

I went into the supper-room where it had been left, which 
was deserted and dark. But a door of communication be- 
tween that and the doctor’s study, where there was a light, 
being open, I-passed on there, to say what I wanted, and to 
get a candle. 

The doctor was sitting in his easy-chair by the fireside, 
and his young wife was on a stool at his feet. The doctor, 
with a complacent smile, was reading aloud some manuscript 
explanation or statement of a theory out of that interminable 
Dictionary, and she was looking up at him. But, with such 
a face as I never saw. It was so beautiful in its form, it was 
so ashy pale, it was so fixed in its abstraction, it was so full 
of a wild, sleep-walking, dreamy horror of I don’t know 
what. The eyes were wide open, and her brown hair fell 
in two rich clusters on her shoulders, and on her white dress, 
disordered by the want of the lost ribbon. Distinctly as 1 
recollect her look, I cannot say of what it was expressive. 
I cannot even say of what it is expressive to me now, rising 
again before my older judgment. Penitence, humiliation, 
shame, pride, love, and trustfulness—I see them all; and in 
them all 1 see that horror of I don’t know what. 

My entrance, and my saying what I wanted, roused her. 
lt disturbed the doctor, too; for when I went back to replace 
the candle I had taken from the table, he was patting her 
head, in his fatherly way, and saying he was a merciless 
drone to let her tempt him into reading on, and he would 
have her go to bed. 

But she asked him, in a rapid, urgent manner, to let her 
stay—to let her feel assured (I heard her murmur some 
broken words to this effect) that she was in his confidence 
that night. And, as she turned again toward him, after 
glancing at me as I left the room and went out of the 
door, I saw her cross her hands upon his knee, and look 
up at him with the same face, something quieted, as he 
resumed his reading. | 


David C@opperfield 295 


It made a great impression on me, and 1 remembered it 
a long time afterward, as I shall have occasion to narrate 
when the time comes. 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
SOMEBODY TURNS UP 


Ir has not occurred to me to mention Peggotty since I 
ran away; but, of course, I wrote her a letter almost as soon 
as 1 was housed at Dover, and another and a longer letter, 
containing all particulars fully related, when my aunt took 
me formally under her protection. On my being settled at 
Dr. Strong’s I wrote to her again, detailing my happy con- 
dition and prospects. I never could have derived anything 
like the pleasure from spending the money Mr. Dick had 
given me, that I felt in sending a gold half-guinea to Peg- 
gotty, per post, inclosed in this last letter, to discharge the 
sum I had borrowed of her; in which epistle, not before, I 
mentioned about the young man with the donkey-cart. 

To these communications Peggotty replied as promptly, 
if not as concisely, as a merchant’s clerk. Her utmost powers 
of expression (which were certainly not great in ink) were 
exhausted in the attempt to write what she felt on the subject 
of my journey. Four sides of incoherent and interjectional 
beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots, were 
inadequate to afford her any relief. But the blots were more 
expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed 
me that Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and 
what could [ have desired more? | 

1 made out, without much difficulty, that she could not take 
quite kindly to my aunt yet. The notice was too short after 
so long a prepossession the other way. We never knewa 
person, ske wrote; but to think that Miss Betsey should seem 
to be so different from what she had been thought to be, was 


296 Works of Charles Diekens 


a Moral!—that was her word. She was evidently still afraid 
of Miss Betsey, for she sent her grateful duty to her but 
timidly, and she was evidently afraid of me, too, and enter- 
tained the probability of my running away again soon; if 
I might judge from the repeated hints she threw out that 
the coach fare to Yarmouth was always to be had of her for 
the asking. | 

She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me 
very much; namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture 
at our old home, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone 
_away, and the house was shut up, to be let or sold. God 
knows I had had no part in it while they remained there; 
but it pained me to think of the dear old place as altogether 
abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the garden, and the 
fallen leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I imagined 
how the winds of winter would howl round it, how the cold 
rain would beat upon the window-glass, how the moon would 
make ghosts on the walls of the empty rooms, watching 
their solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave in 
the churchyard, underneath the tree; and it seemed as if 
the house were dead, too, now, and all connected with my 
father and mother were faded away. 

There was no other news in Peggotty’s letters. Mr. 
Barkis was an excellent husband, she said, though still 
a little near; but we all had our faults, and she had plenty 
(though I am sure I don’t know what they were); and he 
sent his duty, and my little bedroom was always ready for 
me. Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and Mrs. 
Gummidge was but poorly, and little Em’ly wouldn’t send 
her love, but said that Peggotty might send it, if she liked. 

All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only 
reserving to myself the mention of little Em’ly, to whom I 
instinctively felt that she would not very tenderly incline. 
While I was yet new at Dr. Strong’s, she made several ex- 
cursions over to Canterbury to see me, and always at un- 
seasonable hours—with the view, I suppose, of taking me 
by surprise. But, finding me well employed, and bearing 


David Copperfield 297 


a good character, and hearing on all hands that I rose fast 
in the school, she soon discontinued these visits. “1 saw her 
on a Saturday, every third or fourth week, when | went over 
to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick every alternate 
Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to 
stay until next morning. 

On these occasions Mr. Dick never traveled without a 
leathern writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and 
the Memorial; in relation to which document he had a notion 
that time was beginning to press now, and that it really must 
be got out of hand. 

Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his 
visits the more agreeable, my aunt had instructed me to open 
a credit for him at a cake-shop, which was hampered with 
the stipulation that he should not be served with more than 
one shilling’s worth in the course of any one day. ‘This, and 
the reference of all his little bills at the county inn where he 
slept, to my aunt, before they were paid, induced me to sus- 
pect that he was only allowed to rattle his money and not to 
spend it. I found on further investigation that this was so, 
or at least there was an agreement between him and my 
aunt that he should account to her for all his disbursements. 
As he had no idea of deceiving her, and always desired to 
please her, he was thus made chary of launching into expense. 
On this point, as well as on all other possible points, Mr. Dick 
was convinced that my aunt was the wisest and most won- 
derful of women, as he repeatedly told me with infinite 
secrecy, and always in a whisper. 

‘“‘Trotwood,’’ said Mr. Dick, with an air of mystery, 
after imparting this confidence to me one Wednesday, ‘‘who’s 
the man that hides near our house and frightens her?’’ 

‘‘Frightens my aunt, sir?”’ 

Mr. Dick nodded. ‘‘I thought nothing would have 
frightened her,’’ he said, ‘‘for she’s—’’ here he whispered 
softly, ‘‘don’t mention it—the wisest and most wonderful 
of women.’’ Having said which he drew back, to observe 
the effect which this description of her made upon me. 


298 Works of Charles Diekens 


‘“‘The first time he came,’’ said Mr. Dick, ‘‘was—let me 
see—sixteen hundred and forty-nine was the date of King 
Charles’s execution. I think you said sixteen hundred and 
forty-nine?”’ 

‘SV 6s,7 81"? 

‘‘T don’t know how it can be,’’ said Mr. Dick, sorely 
puzzled and shaking his head. ‘‘I don’t think I am as old 
as that.’ ! 

‘“‘Was it in that year that the man appeared, sir?’’ I 
asked. 

‘‘Why, really,’? said Mr. Dick, ‘‘I don’t see how it can 
have been in that year, Trotwood. Did you get that date 
out of history ?”’ 

ff VOs sis: 

‘‘T suppose history never lies, does it?’’ said Mr. Dick, 
with a gleam of hope. 

‘‘Oh, dear, no, sir!’’ I replied, most decisively. I was 
ingenuous and young, and I thought so. 

‘*T can’t make it out,’’ said Mr. Dick, shaking his head. 
‘*There’s something wrong, somewhere. However, it was 
very soon after the mistake was made of putting some of 
the trouble out of King Charles’s head into my head that the 
man first came. 1 was walking out with Miss Trotwood 
after tea, just at dark, and there he was, close to our house.”’ 

‘“Walking about?’’ I inquired. 

‘‘Walking about?’’ repeated Mr. Dick. ‘‘Let mesee. I 
must recollect a bit. N—no, no; he was not walking about.”’ 

I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he was doing. 

**Well, he wasn’t there at all,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘‘until he 
came up behind her, and whispered. Then she turned round 
and fainted, and I stood still and looked at him, and he 
walked away; but that he should have been hiding ever 
since (in the ground or somewhere), is the most extraordinary 
thing!’ 

‘* Has he been hiding ever since?’’ TI asked. 

‘To be sure he has,’’ retorted Mr. Dick, nodding his 
head, gravely. ‘‘Never came out, till last night! We were 


David Gopperfield 299 


walking last night, and he came up behind her again, and 
I knew him again.’’ 

‘‘And did he frighten my aunt again?’’ 

‘“All of a shiver,’’ said Mr. Dick, counterfeiting that 
affection and making his teeth chatter. ‘‘Held by the pal- 
ings. Cried. But, Trotwood, come here,’ getting me close 
to him, that he might whisper very softly; ‘‘why did she 
give him money, boy, in the moonlight?’ 

‘*He was a beggar, perhaps.”’ 

Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the sug- 
gestion; and having replied a great many times, and with 
great confidence, ‘‘No beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!’’ 
went on to say that, from his window, he had afterward, 
and late at night, seen my aunt give this person money out- 
side the garden rails in the moonlight, who then slunk away 
—into the ground again, as he thought probable—and was 
seen no more; while my aunt came hurriedly and secretly 
back into the house, and had, even that morning, been quite 
different from her usual self; which preyed on Mr. Dick’s 
mind. 

I had not the least belief, in the outset of this story, that . 
the unknown was anything but a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and 
one of the line of that ill-fated Prince who occasioned him so 
much difficulty; but after some reflection I began to enter- 
tain the question whether an attempt, or threat of an attempt, 
might have been twice made to take poor Mr. Dick himself 
from under my aunt’s protection, and whether my aunt, the 
strength of whose kind feeling toward him I knew from 
herself, might have been induced to pay a price for his peace 
and quiet. As I was already much attached to Mr. Dick, 
and very solicitous for his welfare, my fears favored this 
supposition; and for a long time his Wednesday hardly 
ever came round without my entertaining a misgiving that 
he would not be on the coach-box as usual. There he al- 
ways appeared, however, gray-headed, laughing, and happy; 
and he never had ets more to tell of the man who could 
frighten my aunt. 


300 Works of Charles Dickens 


These Wednesdays were the happiest days of Mr. Dick’s 
life; they were far from being the least happy of mine. He 
soon became known to every boy in the school, and though 
he never took an active part in any game but kite-flying, was 
as deeply interested in all our sports as any one among us. 
How often have | seen him, intent upon a match at marbles 
or peg-top, looking on with a face of unutterable interest, and 
hardly breathing at the critical times! How often, at hare- 
and-hounds, have I seen him mounted on a little knoll, cheer- 
ing the whole field on to action, and waving his hat above 
his gray head, oblivious of King Charles the Martyr’s head 
and all belonging to it! How many summer hours have Il 
known to be but blissful minutes to him in he cricket-field! 
How many winter days have I seen him, standing blue- 
nosed, in the snow and east wind, looking at the boys 
evoing down the long slide, and clapping his worsted gloves 
in rapture! 

He was a universal favorite, and his ingenuity in little 
things was transcendent. He could cut oranges into such 
devices as none of us had an idea of. He could make a boat 
out of anything, from a skewer upward. He could turn 
crampbones into chessmen; fashion Roman chariots from old 
court cards; make spoked wheels out of cotton reels, and 
bird-cages of old wire. But he was greatest of all, perhaps, 
in the articles of string and straw, with which we were all 
persuaded he could do anything that could be done by 
hands. 

Mr. Dick’s renown was not long confined to us. After a 
few Wednesdays, Dr. Strong himself made some inquiries of 
me about him, and I told him all my aunt had told me, which 
interested the doctor so much that he requested, on the occa- 
sion of his next visit, to be presented to him. This ceremony 
1 performed; and the doctor begging Mr. Dick, whensoever 
he should not find me at the coach-office, to come on there, 
and rest himself until our morning’s work was over, it soon 
passed into a custom for Mr. Dick to come on as a matter of 
course, and, if we were a little late, as often happened on 


David @opperfield 301 


a Wednesday, to walk about the courtyard waiting for me. 
Here he made the acquaintance of the doctor’s beautiful 
young wife (paler than formerly, all this time, more rarely 
seen by me or any one, I think; and not so gay, but not less 
beautiful), and so became more and more familiar by degrees, 
until, at last, he would come into the school and wait. He 
always sat in a particular corner on a particular stool, which 
was called ‘‘Dick,’’ after him; here he would sit, with his 








THE DOCTOR'S WALK 


gray head bent forward, attentively listening to whatever 
might be going on, with a profound veneration for the learn- 
ing he had never been able to acquire. 

This veneration Mr. Dick extended to the doctor, whom 
he thought the most subtle and accomplished philosopher of 
any age. It was long before Mr. Dick ever spoke to him 
otherwise than bare-headed; and even when he and the 
doctor had struck up quite a friendship, and would walk 
together by the hour, on that side of the courtyard which 


302 Works of Charles Dickens 


was known among us as The Doctor’s Walk, Mr. Dick would 
pull off his hat at intervals to show his respect for wisdom 
and knowledge. How it ever came about that the doctor 
began. to read out scraps of the famous Dictionary, in these 
walks, I never knew; perhaps he felt it all the same, at first, 
as reading to himself. However, it passed into a custom, 
too; and Mr. Dick, listening with a face shining with pride 
and pleasure, in his heart of hearts believed the Dictionary 
to be the most delightful book in the world. 

AsI think of them going up and down before those school- 
room windows—the doctor reading with his complacent smile, 
an occasional flourish of the manuscript, or grave motion of 
his head, and Mr. Dick listening, enchainedc by interest, with 
his poor wits calmly wandering God knows where, upon the 
wings of hard words—I think of it as one of the pleasant- 
est things, in a quiet way, that I have ever seen. I feel as 
if they might go walking to and fro forever, and the: world 
might somehow be the better for it—as if a thousand things 
it makes a noise about were not one-half so good for it, 
or me. 

Agnes was one of Mr. Dick’s friends, very soon; and in 
often coming to the house, he made acquaintance with Uriah. 
The friendship between himself and me increased continually, 
and it was maintained on this odd footing: that, while Mr. 
Dick came professionally to look after me as my guardian, 
he always consulted me in any little matter of doubt that 
arose, and invariably guided himself by my advice, not only 
having a high respect for my native sagacity, but considering 
that 1 inherited a good deal from my aunt. 

One Thursday morning, when I was about to walk with 
Mr. Dick from the hotel to the coach-office before going back 
to school (for we had an hour’s school before breakfast), I 
met Uriah in the street, who reminded me of the promise I 
had made to take tea with himself and his mother, adding, 
with a writhe, ‘‘But I didn’t expect you to keep it, Master 
Copperfield, we’re so very ’umble.’’ 

I really had not yet been able to make up my mind whether 


David @opperfield 303 


I liked Uriah or detested him; and I was very doubtful about 
it still, as I stood looking him in the face in the street. Buv 
I felt it quite an affront to be supposed proud, and said I 
only wanted to be asked. 

“Oh, if that’s all, Master Copperfield,’’ said Uriah, ‘‘and 
it really isn’t our ’umbleness that prevents you, will you come 
this evening? But if it is our ’umbleness, 1 hope you won’t 
mind owning to it, Master Copperfield; for we are well aware 
of our condition.”’ 

I said I would mention it to Mr. Wickfield, and if he 
approved, as I had no doubt be would, I would come with 
pleasure. So, at six o’clock that evening, which was one 
of the early office evenings, 1 announced myself as ready to 
Uriah. 

‘‘Mother will be proud, indeed,’’ he said, as we walked 
away together. ‘‘Or she would be proud, if it wasn’t sinful, 
Master Copperfield.”’ 

‘“Yet you didn’t mind supposing J was proud this morn- 
ing,’’ I returned. 

“Oh, dear, no, Master Copperfield!’ returned Uriah. 
*‘Oh, believe me, no! Such a thought never came into my 
head! I shouldn’t have deemed it at all proud if you had 
thought ws too ’umble for you. Because we are so very 
"umble.”’ 

‘‘Have you been studying much law lately?’’ I asked, 
to change the subject. 

‘‘Oh, Master Copperfield,’’ he said, with an air of self- 
denial, ‘‘my reading is hardly to be called study. I have 
passed an hour or two in the evening sometimes, with Mr. 
Tidd.”’ 

‘‘Rather hard, I suppose?”’ said I. . 

‘“‘He is hard to me sometimes,’”’ returned Uriah. ‘‘But 
I don’t know what he might be, to a gifted person.”’ 

After beating a little tune on his chin as we walked on, 
with the two forefingers of his skeleton right hand, he 
added : 

‘There are expressions, you see, Master Copperfield— 


304 Works of Charles Dickens 


atin words-and terms—in Mr. Pat that are trying to a 
Cz. of my ’umble attainments.’ 

‘‘Would you like to be taught Latin?’’ I said, hansen 6ST 
will teach it you with pleasure, as I learn it.’’ 

‘‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’’ he answered, shak- 
ing his head. ‘‘l am sure it’s very kind of you to make the 
offer, but I am much too ’umble to accept it.”’ 

‘‘What nonsense, Uriah!’’ 

‘‘Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield! I 
am greatly obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure 
you; but I am far too ’umble. There are people enough to. 
tread upon me in my lowly state, without my doing outrage 
to their feelings by possessing learning. Learning ain’t for 
me. <A person like myself had better not aspire. If he is 
to get on in life, he must get on ’umbly, Master Copperfield.’’ 

I never saw his mouth so wide, or the creases in his cheeks 
so deep, as when he delivered himself of these sentiments; 
shaking his head all the time, and writhing modestly. 

**T think you are wrong, Uriah,’’ I said. ‘‘I daresay there 
are several things that I could teach you, if you would like 
to learn them.’’ 

‘‘Oh, I don’t doubt that, Master Copperfield,’’? he an- 
swered, ‘‘not in the least. But not being ’umble yourself, 
you don’t judge well, perhaps, for them that are. I won’t 
provoke my betters with knowledge, thank you. I’m much 
too ’umble. Here is my ’umble dwelling, Master Copper- 
field !”’ 

We entered a low, old-fashioned room, walked straight 
into from the street, and found there Mrs. Heep, who was 
the dead image of Uriah, only short. She received me with 
the utmost humility, and apologized to me for giving her son 
a kiss, observing that, lowly as they were, they had their 
natural affections, which they hoped would give no offense 
to any one. It was a perfectly decent room, half parlor and 
half kitchen, but not at all a snug room. The tea-things 
were set upon the table, and the kettle was boiling on the 
hob. There was a chest of drawers with an escritoire top, 


David Copperfield 305 


for Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was 
Uriah’s blue bag lying down and vomiting papers; there was 
a company of Uriah’s books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there 
was a corner cupboard, and there were the usual articles of 
furniture. I don’t remember that any individual object had 
a bare, pinched, spare look; but I do remember that the 
whole place had. 

It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep’s humility that she 
still wore weeds. Notwithstanding the lapse of time that 
had occurred since Mr. Heep’s decease, she still wore weeds. 
[ think there was some compromise in the cap, but otherwise 
she was as weedy as in the early days of her mourning. 

‘‘This is a day to be remembered, my Uriah, I am sure,’’ 
said Mrs. Heep, making the tea, ‘‘when Master Copperfield 
pays us a visit.”’ ; 

**1 said you’d think so, mother,’’ said Uriah. 

‘If 1 could have wished father to remain among us for 
any reason,’’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘‘it would have been that he 
might have known his company this afternoon.’’ 

I felt embarrassed by these compliments; but I was sen- 
sible, too, of being entertained as an honored guest, and I 
thought Mrs. Heep an agreeable woman. 

“‘My Uriah,’’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘‘has looked forward to 
this, sir, a long while. He had his fears that our ’umbleness 
stood in the way, and I joined in them myself. ’Umble 
we are, ’umble we have been, ’umble we shall ever be,’’ 
said Mrs. Heep. 

‘‘T am sure you have no occasion to be so, ma’am,”’ I said, 
‘‘unless you like.”’ 

‘“‘Thank you, sir,’’ retorted Mrs. Heep. ‘‘We know our 
station and are thankful in it.”’ 

1 found that Mrs. Heep gradually got nearer to me, and 
that Uriah gradually got opposite to me, and that they 
respectfully plied me with the choicest of the eatables on the 
- table. There was nothing particularly choice there, to be 
sure; but 1 took the will for the deed, and felt that they 
were very attentive. Presently they began to talk about 


306 Works of @harles Diekens 


aunts, and then [ told them about mine, and about fathers 
and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then 
Mrs. Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I 
began to tell her about mine—but stopped, because my aunt 
had advised me to observe a silence on that subject. A 
tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance 
against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against 
a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battle- 
dores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did 
just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of 
me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to 
think of—the more especially as, in my juvenile frankness, 
I took some credit to myself for being so confidential, and 
felt that | was quite the patron of my two respectful enter- 
tainers. : 

They were very fond of one another; that was certain. 
I take it that had its effect upon me, as a touch of Nature; 
but the skill with which the one followed up whatever the 
other said was a touch of art which I was still less proof 
against. When there was nothing more to be got out of me 
about myself (for on the Murdstone & Grinby life, and on 
my journey, I was dumb), they began about Mr. Wickfield 
and Agnes. Uriah threw the ball to Mrs. Heep, Mrs. Heep 
caught it and threw it back to Uriah, Uriah kept it up a 
little while, then sent it back to Mrs. Heep, and so they went 
on tossing it about until 1 had no idea who had got it, and 
was quite bewildered. The ball itself was always changing 
too. Now it was Mr. Wickfield, now Agnes, now the excel- 
lence of Mr. Wicktield, now my admiration of Agnes; now 
the extent of Mr. Wickfield’s business and resources, now our 
domestic life after dinner; now the wine that Mr. Wickfield 
took, the reason why he took it, and the pity that it was he 
took so much; now one thing, now another, then everything 
at once; and all the time, without appearing to speak very 
often, or to do anything but sometimes encourage them a 
little, for fear they should be overcome by their humility and 
the honor of my company, I found myself perpetually letting 


David Gopperfield 307 


out something or other that 1 had no business to let out, 
and seeing the effect of it in the twinkling of Uriah’s dinted 
nostrils. 

I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and to wish my- 
self well out of the visit, when a figure coming down the street 
passed the door—it stood open to air the room, which was 
warm, the weather being close for the time of year—came 
back again, looked in, and walked in, ezplnianing , loudly: 
‘‘Copperfield! 1s it possible!’’ 

It was Mr. Micawber! It was Mr. Micawber, with his 
eyeglass, and his walking-stick, and his shirt-collar, and his 
genteel air, and the condescending roll in his voice, all 
complete! 

**My dear Copperfield,’’ said Mr. Micawber, putting out 
his hand, ‘‘this is indeed a meeting which is calculated to 
impress the mind with a sense of the instability and uncer- 
tainty of all human—in short, it is a most extraordinary 
meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting upon the 
probability of something turning up (of which I am at 
present rather sanguine), | find a young but valued friend 
turn up, who is connected with the most .eventful period of 
my life; I may say, with the turning point of my existence. 
Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do you do?”’ 

1 cannot say—lI really cannot say—that I was glad to see 
Mr. Micawber there; but I was glad to see him, too, and 
shook hands with him heartily, inquiring how Mrs. Micaw- 
ber was. 

‘‘Thank you,”’ said Mr. Micawber, waving his hand as of 
old, and settling his chin in his shirt-collar. ‘‘She is toler- 
ably convalescent. The twins no longer derive their suste- 
nance from Nature’s founts—in short,’’ said Mr. Micawber, 
in one of his bursts of confidence, ‘‘they are weaned—and 
Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my traveling companion. She 
will be rejoiced, Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with 
one who has proved himself in all respects a worthy minister 
at the sacred altar of friendship.’”’ 

1 said I should be delighted to see her. 


308 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘““You are very good,’’ said Mr. Micawber. 

Mr. Micawber then smiled, settled his chin again, and 
looked about him. 

‘‘] have discovered my friend Copperfield,’’ said Mr. 
Micawber, genteelly, and without addressing himself particu- 
larly to any one, ‘‘not in solitude, but partaking of a social 
meal in company with a widow lady, and one who is appar- 
ently her offspring—in short,’’ said Mr. Micawber, in another 
of his bursts of confidence, ‘‘her son. I shall esteem it an 
honor to be presented.’’ 

I could do no less, under these circumstances, than make 
Mr. Micawber known to Uriah Heep and his mother, which 
I accordingly did. As they abased themselves before him, 
Mr. Micawber took a seat, and waved his hand in his most 
courtly manner. 

‘‘Any friend of my friend Copperfield’s,’’ said Mr. Micaw- 
ber, ‘‘has a personal claim upon myself.’’ 

‘‘We are too ’umble, sir,’’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘‘my son — 
and me, to be the friends of Master Copperfield. He has 
been so good as to take his tea with us, and we are 
thankful to him :for his company; also to you, sir, for 
your notice.’’ 

‘‘Ma’am,”’ returned Mr. Micawber, with a bow, ‘‘you are 
very obliging; and what are you doing, Copperfield? Still 
in the wine trade?’’ 

1 was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micawber away; 
and replied, with my hat in my hand, and a very red face, 
1 have no doubt, that I was a pupil at Dr. Strong’s. 

‘A pupil??? said Mr. Micawber, raising his eyebrows. 
“‘T'am extremely happy to hear it. Although a mind like 
my friend Coppertield’s’’—to Uriah and Mrs. Heep—‘‘does 
not require that cultivation which, without his knowledge of 
men and things, it would require, still it is a rich soil teem- 
ing with latent vegetation—in short,’’ said Mr. Micawber, 
smiling, in another burst of confidence, ‘‘it is an intellect 
capable of getting up the classics to any extent.”’ 

Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one an- 


David Gopperfield 309 


other, made a ghastly writhe from the waist upward, to 
express his concurrence in this estimation of me. 

‘Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?’’ I said, to get 
Mr. Micawber away. 

“If you will do her that favor, Copperfield,’’ replied Mr. 
Micawber, rising. ‘‘I have no scruple in saying, in the pres- 
ence of our friends here, that Iam a man who has, for some 
years, contended against the pressure of pecuniary difficul- 
ties.’? I knew he was certain to say something of this kind; 
he always would be so boastful about his difficulties. ‘‘Some- 
times I have risen superior to my difficulties. Sometimes my 
difficulties have—in short, have floored me. There have been 
times when I have administered a succession of facers to them; 
there have been times when they have been too many for me, 
and | have given in, and said to Mrs. Micawber, in the words 
of Cato, ‘Plato, thou reasonest well.’ It’s all up now. I can 
show fight no more. But at no time of my life,’’ said Mr. 
Micawber, ‘‘have I enjoyed a higher degree of satisfaction 
than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties, 
chiefly arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory 
notes at two and four months, by that word) into the bosom 
of my friend Copperfield.’’ 

Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute by saying: 
‘“‘Mr. Heep! Good-evening. Mrs. Heep! Your servant,”’ 
and then walking out with me in his most fashionable man- 
ner, making a good deal of noise on the pavement with his 
shoes, and humming a tune as we went. 

It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he 
occupied a little room in it, partitioned off from the commer- 
cial room, and strongly flavored with tobaccosmoke. I think 
it was over the kitchen, because a warm, greasy smell ap- 
peared to come up through the chinks in the floor, and there 
was a flabby perspiration on the walls. I know it was near 
the bar, on account of the smell of spirits and jingling of 
classes. Here, recumbent on a small sofa, underneath a 
picture of a racehorse, with her head close to the fire, and 
her feet pushing the mustard off the dumb-waiter at the 


310 Works of Charles Diekens 


other end of the room, was Mrs. Micawber, to whom Mr. 
Micawber entered first, saying: ‘‘My dear, allow me to in- 
troduce to you a pupil of Dr. Strong’s.”’ 

I noticed, by the bye, that although Mr. Micawber was 
just as much confused as ever about my age and standing, 
he always remembered, as a genteel thing, that I was a 
pupil of Dr. Strong’s. 

Mrs. Micawber was amazed, but very glad to see me. I 
was very glad to see her too, and after an affectionate greet- 
ing on both sides, sat down on the small sofa near her. 

‘*My dear,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘if you will mention to 
Copperfield what our present position is, which I have no 
doubt he will like to know, I will go and look at the paper 
the while, and see whether anything turns up among the 
advertisements.”’ 

‘‘T thought you were at Plymouth, ma’am,’’ I said to 
Mrs. Micawber, as he went out. 

‘‘My dear Master Copperfield,’’ she replied, ‘‘we went to 
Plymouth.’’ 

‘To be on the spot,’’ I hinted. 

‘Just so,’? said Mrs. Micawber. ‘‘To be on the spot. 
But, the truth is, talent is not wanted in the Custom House. 
The local influence of my family was quite unavailing to 
obtain any employment in that department for a man of 
Mr. Micawber’s abilities. They would rather not have a 
man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. He would only show the 
deficiency of the others. Apart from which,’’ said Mrs. 
Micawber, ‘‘I will not disguise from you, my dear Master 
Copperfield, that when that branch of my family which is 
settled in Plymouth became aware that Mr. Micawber was 
accompanied by myself, and by little Wilkins and his sister, 
and by the twins, they did not receive him with that ardor 
which he might have expected, being so newly released from 
captivity. In fact,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, lowering her 
voice—‘‘this is between ourselves—our reception was cool.’’ 

‘‘Dear me!’’ I said. 

‘“Yes,”? said Mrs. Micawber. ‘‘It is truly painful to con- 


David @opperfield 311 


template mankind in such an aspect, Master Copperfield, but 
our reception was, decidedly, cool. There is no doubt about 
it. In fact, that branch of my family which is settled in 
Plymouth became quite personal to Mr. Micawber before we 
had been there a week.”’ 

I said, and thought, that they ought to be ashamed of 
themselves. 

“Still, so it was,’’? continued Mrs. Micawber. ‘‘Under 
such circumstances, what could a man of Mr. Micawber’s 
spirit do? But one obvious course was left. To borrow of 
that branch of my family the money to return to London, 
and to return at any sacrifice.’’ 

“Then you all came back again, ma’am?’’ | said. 

‘“‘We all came back again,’’ replied Mrs. Micawber. 
‘Since then, I have consulted other branches of my family 
on the course which it is most expedient for Mr. Micawber 
to take—for I maintain that he must take some course, 
Master Copperfield,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, argumentatively. 
‘Tt is clear that a ey. of six, not including a Baan, 
_ cannot live upon air.’ 

‘Certainly, ma’am,”’’ said I. 

‘‘The opinion of those other branches of my family,’’ pur- 
sued Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘is, that Mr. Micawber should imme- 
diately turn his attention to coals.’’ 

*“T'o what, ma’am?”’ 

‘*To coals,’’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘‘To the coal trade. 
Mr. Micawber was induced to think, on inquiry, that there 
might be an opening for a man of his talent in the Medway 
Coal Trade. Then, as Mr. Micawber very properly said, the 
first step to be taken clearly was to come and see the Med- 
way. Which we came and saw. I say ‘we,’ Master Cop- 
perfield; for I never will,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, with emotion, 
‘*T never will desert Mr. Micawber.’’ 

I murmured my admiration and approbation. 

‘“We came,’’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘and saw the 
Medway. My opinion of the coal trade on that river is, 
that it may require talent, but that it certainly requires 


9? 


312 Works of Charles Dickens 


capital. Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber 
has not. We saw, I think, the greater part of the Medway, 
and that is my individual conclusion. Being so near here, 
Mr. Micawber was of opinion that it would be rash not to 
come on and see the Cathedral. Firstly, on account of its 
being so well worth seeing, and our never having seen it; 
and secondly, on account of the great probability of some- 
thing turning up in a cathedral town. We have been here,”’ 
said Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘threedays. Nothing has, as yet, turned 
up; and it may not surprise you, my dear Master Copperfield, 
so much as it would a stranger, to know that we are at present 
waiting for a remittance from London to: discharge our pe- 
cuniary obligations at this hotel. Until the arrival of that 
remittance,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, with much feeling, ‘‘I am 
cut off from my home (I allude to lodgings in Pentonville), 
from my boy and girl, and from my twins.”’ 

I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in 
this anxious extremity, and said as much to Mr. Micawber, 
who now returned—adding that I only wished I had money 
enough to lend them the amount they needed. Mr. Micaw- 
ber’s answer expressed the disturbance of his mind. . He 
said, shaking hands with me, ‘‘Copperfield, you are a -true 
friend; but when the worst comes to the worst, no man 
is without a friend who is possessed of shaving materials.”’ 
At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber threw her arms around © 
Mr. Micawber’s neck and entreated him to be calm. He .- 
wept; but so far recovered, almost immediately, as to ring 
the bell for the waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding 
and a plate of shrimps for breakfast in the morning. _ 

When I took my leave of them they both pressed me so 
much to come and dine before they went away that I could 
not refuse. But, as I knew I could not come next day, when 
I should have a good deal to prepare in the evening, Mr. 
Micawber arranged that he would call at Dr. Strong’s in the 
course of the morning (having a presentiment that the re- 
mittance would arrive by that post), and propose the day 
after, if it would suit me better. Accordingly 1 was called 


David Gopperfield 313 


_ out of school next forenoon, and found Mr. Micawber in the 
parlor, who had called to say that dinner would take place 
as proposed. When I asked him if the remittance had come, 
he pressed my hand and departed. | 

As I was looking out of window that same evening, it 
surprised me and made me rather uneasy to see Mr. Micaw- 
ber and Uriah Heep walk past, arm in arm—Uriah humbly 
sensible of the honor that was done him, and Mr. Micawber 
taking a bland delight in extending his patronage to Uriah. 
But I was still more surprised when I went to the little 
hotel next day at the appointed dinner hour, which was four 
o’clock, to find, from what Mr. Micawber said, that he had 
gone home with Uriah, and had drunk brandy-and-water 
at Mrs. Heep’s. . 

**And I’ll tell you what, my dear Copperfield,”’ said Mr. 

Micawber, ‘‘your friend Heep is a young fellow who might 
be attorney-general. If I had known that young man, at 
the period when my difficulties came to a crisis, all I can say 
is, that 1 believe my creditors would have been a great deal 
better managed than they were.”’ 
_ I hardly understood how this could have been, seeing that 
Mr Micawber had paid them nothing at all as it was; but I 
did not like to ask. Neither did I like to say that I hoped he 
had not been too communicative to Uriah, or to inquire if 
they had talked much about me. Iwas afraid of hurting 
Mr. Micawber’s feelings, or, at all events, Mrs. Micawber’s, 
she being very sensitive; but I was uncomfortable about it, 
too, and often thought about it afterward. 

We had a beautiful little dinner. Quite an elegant dish 
of fish; the kidney-end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sau- 
sage-meat; a partridge, and a pudding. There was wine, 
and there was strong ale; and after dinner Mrs. Micawber 
made us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands. 

Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial. I never saw 
him such good company. He made his face shine with the 
punch, so that it looked as if it had been varnished all over. 
He got cheerfully sentimental about the town, and proposed 


314 Works of @harles Dickens 


success to it; observing that Mrs. Micawber and himself had . 
been made extremely snug and comfortable there, and that 
he never should forget the agreeable hours they had passed 
in Canterbury. He proposed me afterward, and he and Mrs. 
Micawber and I took a review of our past acquaintance, in 
the course of which we sold the property all over again. 
Then I proposed Mrs. Micawber; or, at least, said mod- 
estly: ‘If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Micawber, I shall now have 
the pleasure of drinking your health, ma’am.’’? On which 
Mr. Micawber delivered an eulogium on Mrs. Micawber’s 
character, and said she had ever been his guide, philosopher, 
and friend, and that he would recommend me, when I came 
to a marrying time of life, to marry such another woman, if 
‘such another woman could be found. | 

As the punch disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still 
more friendly and convivial. Mrs. Micawbér’s spirits be- 
coming elevated, too, we sang ‘‘Auld Lang Syne.’? When 
we came to ‘‘Here’s a hand, my trusty frere,’’ we all joined 
hands round the table, and when we declared we would ‘‘take 
a right gude Willie Waught,’’ and hadn’t the least idea what 
it meant, we were really affected. 

In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as 
Mr. Micawber was, down to the very last moment of the 
evening, when I took a hearty farewell of himself and his 
amiable wife. Consequently, 1 was not -prepared, at seven 
o’clock next morning, to receive the following communica- 
tion, dated half-past nine in the evening; a quarter of an hour 
after I had left him: 


‘*MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND: The die is cast—all is over. 
Hiding the ravages of care with a sickly mask of mirth, I 
have not informed you, this evening, that there is no hope 
of the remittance! Under these circumstances, alike humili- 
ating to endure, humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating 
to relate, [ have discharged the-pecuniary liability contracted 
at this establishment by giving a note of hand, made payable 
fourteen days after date, at my residence, Pentonville, Lon- 


David @opperfield 315 


don. When it becomes due, it will not be taken up. The 
result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree 
must fall. 

‘‘Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear 
Copperfield, be a beacon to you through life. He writes with 
that intention, and in that hope. If he could think himself 
of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, pene- 
trate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence— 
though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), 
extremely problematical. 

“This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, 
you will ever receive 

“From 
“The 
‘*Beggared Outcast, 
‘*WILKINS MICAWBER.”’ 


I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending 
letter that I ran off directly toward the little hotel with the 
intention of taking it on my way to Dr. Strong’s and trying 
to soothe Mr. Micawber with a word of comfort. But, half- 
way there, I met the London coach with Mr. and Mrs. Micaw- 
ber up behind; Mr. Micawber the very picture of tranquil 
enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber’s conversation, eating 
walnuts out of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his 
breast-pocket. As they did not see me, I thought it best, 
all things considered, not to see them. So, with a great 
weight taken off my mind, I turned into a by-street that was 
the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole, relieved 
that they were gone—though I still liked them very much, 
nevertheless. 


316 Works of Charles Dickens 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


A RETROSPECT 


My schooldays! The silent gliding on of my existence— 
the unseen, unfelt progress of my life—from childhood up to 
youth! Let me think, as 1 look back upon that flowing 
water, now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whether 
there are any marks along its course by which I can remem- 
ber -how it ran. 

A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, 
where we all went together, every Sunday morning, assem- 
bling first at school for that purpose. The earthy smell, the 
sunless air, the sensation of the world being shut out, the 
resounding of the organ through the black and white arched 
galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back and hold 
me hovering above those days in a half-sleeping and half- 
waking dream. 

I am not the last boy in the school. I have risen, in a 
few months, over several heads. But the first boy seems to 
me a mighty creature, dwelling afar off, whose giddy height 
is unattainable. Agnes says ‘‘No,’’ but 1 say ‘‘Yes,’’ and 
tell her that she little thinks what stores of knowledge have 
been mastered by the wonderful Being, at whose place she 
thinks I, even I, weak aspirant, may arrive in time. He 
is not my private friend and public patron, as Steerforth was, 
but I hold him in a reverential respect. I chiefly wonder 
what he’ll be, when he leaves Dr. Strong’s, and what man- 
kind will do to maintain any place against him. 

But who is this that breaks upon me? This is Miss Shep- 
herd, whom I love. 

Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Nettingall’s 
establishment. I adore Miss Shepherd. She is a little girl, 
in a spencer, with a round face and curly flaxen hair. The 
Misses Nettingall’s young ladies come to the Cathedral, too. 


David Copperfield 317 


I cannot look upon my book, for I inust look upon Miss Shep- 
herd. When the choristers chant I hear Miss Shepherd. In 
the service I mentally insert Miss Shepherd’s name—I put 
her in among the Royal Family. At home in my own room 
I am sometimes moved to cry out, ‘‘Oh, Miss Shepherd!’ 
in a transport of love. 

* For some time I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd’s feelings; 
but, at length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing- 
school. Ihave Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss 
Shepherd’s glove, and feel a thrill go up the right arm of my 
jacket and come out at my hair. I say nothing tender to 
Miss Shepherd, but we understand each other. Miss Shep- 
herd and myself live but to be united. 

Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts 
for a present, I wonder? ‘They are not expressive of affec- 
tion, they are difficult to pack into a parcel of any regular 
shape, they are hard to crack, even in room doors, and they 
are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are appropriate 
to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon 
Miss Shepherd, and oranges innumerable. 

Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in the cloak-room. I[Ecstasy! 
What are my agony and indignation next day, when I hear 
a flying rumor that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss 
Shepherd in the stocks for turning in her toes! 

Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision 
of my life, how do I ever come to break with her 1 can’t con- 
ceive. And yet a coolness grows between Miss Shepherd and 
myself. Whispers reach me of Miss Shepherd having said 
she wished I wouldn’t stare so, and having avowed a pref- 
erence for Master Jones—for Jones! a boy of no merit what- 
ever! The gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. At 
last, one day, I meet the Misses Nettingall’s establishment out 
walking. Miss Shepherd makes a face as she goes by, and 
laughs to her companion. All is over. The devotion of a 
life—it seems a life, it is all the same—is at an end; Miss 
Shepherd comes out of the morning service and the Royal 
Family know her no more. 


318 Works of Charles Dickens 


Iam higher in the school, and no one breaks my peace 
I am not at all polite now to the Misses Nettingall’s young 
ladies, and shouldn’t dote on any of them if they were twice 
as many, and twenty times as beautiful. 1 think the dancing- 
school a tiresome affair, and wonder why the girls can’t dance 
by themselves, and leave us alone. I am growing great in 
Latin verses, and neglect the laces of my boots. Dr. Strong 
refers to me in public as a promising young scholar. Mr. 
Dick is wild with joy, and my aunt remits me a guinea by 
the next post. 

The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of 
an armed head in Macbeth. Who is this young butcher? He 
is the terror of the youth of Canterbury. There is a vague 
belief abroad that the beef suet with which he anoints his 
hair gives him unnatural strength, and that he is a match for 
a man. He is a broad-faced, bull-necked young butcher, 
with rough red cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an in- 
jurious tongue. His main use of this tongue is, to disparage 
Dr. Strong’s young gentlemen. He says publicly that if they — 
want anything he’ll give it ’em. He names individuals among 
them (myself included), whom he could undertake to settle 
with one hand, and the other tied behind him. He waylays 
the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and calls 
challenges after me in the open streets. For these sufficient 
reasons I resolve to fight the butcher. 

Jt is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the 
corner of awall. I meet the butcher by appointment. Iam at- 
tended by a select body of our boys; the butcher, by two other 
butchers, a young publican, and a sweep. The preliminaries 
are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to face. 
In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of 
my left eyebrow. In another moment, I don’t know where 
the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is. I hardly 
know which is myself and which the butcher, we are always 
in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon the trodden 
grass. Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident, 
sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping on my second’s 


David Gopperfield 319 


knee; sometimes I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my 
knuckles open against his face, without appearing to discom- 
pose him at all. At last I awake, very queer about the head, 
as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walking off, con- 
gratulated by the two other butchers and the sweep and_ pub- 
lican, and putting on his coat as he goes; from which I augur, 
justly, that the victory is his. 

I am taken home in a sad plight, and I have beefsteaks 
put to my eyes, and am rubbed with vinegar and brandy, and 
find a great white puffy place bursting out on my upper lip, 
which swells immoderately. For three or four days I remain 
at home, a very ill-looking subject, with a green shade over 
my eyes; and I should be very dull but that Agnes is a sister 
to me, and condoles with me, and reads to me, and makes the 
time light and happy. Agnes has my confidence completely, 
always; I tell her all about the butcher, and the wrongs he 
has heaped upon me; and she thinks 1 couldn’t have done 
otherwise than fight the butcher, while she shrinks and 
trembles at my having fought him. 

Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the 
head-boy in the days that are come now, nor has he been 
this many and many aday. Adams has left the school so 
long that when he comes back, on a visit to Dr. Strong, there 
are not many there, besides myself, who know him. Adams 
is going to be called to the bar almost directly, and is to be 
an advocate, and to wear a wig. I -am surprised to find him 
a meeker man than I had thought, and less imposing in 
appearance. -He has not staggered the world yet, either; for 
it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the same 
- as if he had never joined it. 

A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history 
march on in stately hosts that seem to have no end—and what 
comes next! Jam the head-boy now; and look down on the 
line of boys below me with a condescending interest in such 
of thern as bring to my mind the boy I was myself, when I 
first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part of 
me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road 


320 Works of @hbarles Dickens 


of life—as something I have passed, rather than have actu- 
ally been—and almost think of him as of some one else. 

And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wick- 
field’s, where is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect 
likeness of the picture, a child likeness no more, moves about 
the house; and Agnes—my sweet sister, as I call her in my 
thoughts, my counselor and: friend, the better angel of the 
lives of all who come within her calm, good, self-denying 
influence—is quite a woman. 

What other changes have come upon me, besides the 
changes in my growth and looks, and in the knowledge I 
have gatnered all this while? I wear a gold watch and 
chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed coat; 
and 1 use a great deal of bear’s grease—which, taken in 
conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am I in love again? 
Iam. I worship the eldest Miss Larkins. 

The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, 
dark, black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss 
Larkins is not a chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is 
not that, and the eldest must be three or four years older. 
Perhaps the eldest Miss Larkins may be about thirty. My 
passion for her is beyond all bounds. 

The eldest Miss Larkins knows officers. It is an awful 
thing to bear. I see them speaking to her in the street. I 
see them cross the way to meet her, when her bonnet (she 
has a bright taste in bonnets) is seen coming down the pave- 
ment, accompanied by her sister’s bonnet. She laughs and 
talks, and seems to like it. Ispend a good deal of my own 
spare time in walking up and down to meet her. If I can 
bow to her once in the day (1 know her to bow to, knowing 
Mr. Larkins), I am happier. I deserve a bow now and then. 
The raging agonies | suffer on the night of the Race Ball, 
where I know the eldest Miss Larkins will be dancing with 
the military, ought to have some compensation, if there be 
even-handed justice in the world. 

My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear 
my newest silk-neckerchief continually. I have no relief but 


‘David Gopperfield 321 


in putting on my best clothes, and having my boots cleaned 
over and over again. I seem, then, to be worthier of the 
eldest Miss Larkins. Everything that belongs to her, or is 
connected with her, is precious tome. Mr. Larkins (a gruff 
old gentleman with a double chin and one of his eyes immov- 
able in his head) is fraught with interest to me. When I 
can’t meet his daughter, 1 go where | am likely to meet him. 
To say ‘‘How do you do, Mr. Larkins? Are the young ladies 
and all the family quite well?’’ seems so pointed that I blush. 

I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, 
and say that seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, 
what of that? Besides, I shall be one-and-twenty in no time 
almost. I regularly take walks outside Mr. Larkins’s house 
in the evening, though it cuts me to the heart to see the officers 
go in, or to hear them up in the drawing-room, where the 
eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp. I even walk, on two 
or three occasions, in a sickly, spoony manner, round and 
round the house after the family are gone to bed, wondering 
which is the eldest Miss Larkins’s chamber (and pitching, I 
daresay now, on Mr. Larkins’s instead); wishing that a fire 
would burst out; that the assembled crowd would stand ap- 
palled; that I, dashing through them with a ladder, might 
rear it against her window, save her in my arms, go back 
for something she had left behind, and perish in the flames. 
For Lam generally disinterested in my love, and think I could 
be content to make a figure before Miss Larkins and expire. 
—Generally, but not always. Sometimes brighter visions 
rise before me. When I dress (the occupation of two hours), 
for a great ball given at the Larkins’s (the anticipation of 
three weeks), | indulge my fancy with pleasing images. I 
picture myself taking courage to make a declaration to Miss 
Larkins. I picture Miss Larkins sinking her head upon my 
shoulder, and saying: ‘‘Oh, Mr. Copperfield, can I believe 
my ears!’’ I picture Mr. Larkins waiting on me next morn- 
ing, and saying: ‘‘My dear Copperfield, my daughter has 
told me all. Youth is no objection. Here are twenty thou- 
sand pounds. Be happy!’’ I picture my aunt relenting, 

Vou. II—(11) 


322 Works of Charles Diekens 


and blessing us; and Mr. Dick and Dr. Strong being present 
at the marriage ceremony. [Iam a sensible fellow, I believe 
—I believe, on looking back, I mean—and modest, I am sure; 
but all this goes on notwithstanding. 

1 repair .to the enchanted house, where there are lights, 
chattering, music, flowers, officers (1 am sorry to see), and 
the eldest Miss Larkins, a blaze of beauty. She is dressed 
in blue, with blue flowers in her hair—forget-me-nots—as if 
she had any need to wear forget-me-nots! It is the first 
really grown-up party that I have ever been invited to, and 
1 am a little uncomfortable; for 1 appear not to belong to 
anybody, and nobody appears to have anything to say to me, 
except Mr. Larkins, who asks me how my school-fellows are, 
which he needn’t do, as I have not come there to be insulted. 

But after 1 have stood in the doorway for some time, and 
feasted my eyes upon the goddess of my heart, she approaches 
me—she, the eldest Miss Larkins!—and asks me pleasantly 
if 1 dance. | | 

1 stammer, with a bow: ‘‘With you, Miss Larkins?”’ 

‘‘With no one else?’’ inquires Miss Larkins. 

‘‘T should have no pleasure in dancing with any one 
else.”’ 7 

Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), 
and says: ‘‘Next time but one, I shall be very glad.”’ 

The time arrives. ‘‘lt is a waltz, I think,’’ Miss Larkins 
doubtfully observes, when I present myself. ‘‘Do you waltz? 
lf not, Captain Bailey—’’ 

But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and 1 take 
Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Cap- 
tain Bailey. He is wretched, 1 have no doubt; but he is 
nothing to me. I have been wretched, too. I waltz with the 
eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where, among whom, or ' 
how long. I only know that I swiin about in space, with a 
blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until J find myself 
alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She ad- 
mires a flower (pink camelia japonica, price half-a-crown) in 
my button-hole. 1 give it to her, and say: 


David Copperfield ~ ore 


‘‘T ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.’’ 

‘‘Indeed! What is that?’’ returns Miss Larkins. 

‘*A flower of yours, that 1 may treasure it as a miser 
does gold.’’ 

‘*You’re a bold boy,’’ says Miss Larkins. ‘‘There.’’ 

She gives it me, not displeased! and I put it to my lips, 
and then into my breast. Miss Larkins, laughing, draws 





‘“*] ASK AN INESTIMABLE PRICE FOR IT, MISS LARKINS”’ 


her hand through my arm, and says, ‘‘Now take me back 
fo Captain Bailey.’’ 

I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, 
and the waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain 
elderly gentleman, who has been playing whist all night, 
upon her arm, and says: 

“‘Oh! here is my bold friend! Mr. Chestle wants to know 
you, Mr. Copperfield.’’ 

I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am 
much gratified. 


B24 * Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘T admire your taste, sir,’’ says Mr. Chestle. ‘‘1t does 
you credit. I suppose you don’t take much interest in hops; 
but Iam a pretty large grower myself, and if you ever like 
to come over to our neighborhood—neighborhood of Ashford 
—and take a run about our place, we shall be glad for you to 
stop as long as you like.’ 

I thank Mr. Chestle ne and shake hands. 1 think 
I am in a happy dream. I waltz with the eldest Miss Lar- 
kins once again—she says I waltz so well! I go home in a 
state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in imagination, all night 
long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear divinity. 
For some days afterward I am lost in rapturous reflections; 
but I neither see her in the street, nor when I call. I am 
imperfectly consoled for this disappointment by the sacred 
pledge, the perished flower. 

‘*Trotwood,’’ says Agnes, one day after dinner. ‘“*‘Who 
do you think is going to be married to-morrow? Some one 
you admire.”’ 

‘*Not you, I suppose, Agnes?’’ 

‘*Not me!’ raising her cheerful face from the music she 
is copying. ‘‘Do you hear him, papa?—The eldest Miss 
Larkins. ”’ . 
‘“To—to Captain Bailey?’? 1 have just power enough 
to ask, | : 

‘‘No; to no captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.”’ 

I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off 
my ring, I wear my worst clothes, I use no bear’s grease, and 
1 frequently lament over the late Miss Larkins’s faded flower. 
Being by that time rather tired of this kind of life, and hav- 
ing received new provocation from the butcher, I throw the 
flower away, go out with the butcher, and gloriously defeat 
him. t 

This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the 
bear’s grease in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, 
now, in my progress to seventeen. 


ees ee 


David Gopperfield 325 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 
I LOOK ABOUT ME, AND MAKE A DISCOVERY 


I am doubtful whether I was at heart glad or sorry when 
my schooldays drew to an end, and the time came for my 
leaving Dr. Strong’s. I had been very happy there, 1 had 
a great attachment for the doctor, and I was eminent and 
distinguished in that little world. For these reasons I was 
sorry to go; but for other reasons, unsubstantial enough, 1 
was glad. Misty ideas of being a young man at my own 
disposal, of the importance attaching to a young man at his 
own disposal, of the wonderful things to be seen and done by 
that magnificent animal, and the wonderful effects he could 
not fail to make upon society, lured me away. So powerful 
were these visionary considerations in my boyish mind that 
I seem, according to my present way of thinking, to have 
left school without natural regret. The separation has not 
made the impression on me that other separations have. I 
try in vain to recall how I felt about it, and what its circum- 
stances were; but it is not momentous in my recollection. I 
suppose the opening prospect confused me. I know that my 
juvenile experiences went for little or nothing then; and that 
life was more like a great fairy story, which I was just about 
to begin to read, than anything else. 

My aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the 
calling to which 1 should be devoted. For a year or more 
I had endeavored to find a satisfactory answer to her often- 
repeated question: ‘‘ What I would like to be?’’ But 1 had 
no particular liking, that 1 could discover, for anything. If 
I could have been inspired with a knowledge of the science 
of navigation, taken the command of a fast-sailing expedi- 
tion, and gone round the world on a triumphant voyage of 
discovery, I think I might have considered myself completely 


326 Works of Charles Dickens 


suited. But in the absence of any such miraculous provision, 
my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit that would not 
lie too heavily upon her purse, and to do my duty in it, what- 
ever it might be. 7 

Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils, with a 
meditative and sage demeanor. He never made a suggestion 
but once, and on that occasion (I don’t know what put it in 
his head), he suddenly proposed that I should be ‘‘a Brazier.’’ 
My aunt received this proposal so very ungraciously that he 
never ventured on a second; but ever afterward confined 
himself to looking watchfully at her for her suggestions, and 
rattling his money. 

‘‘Trot, I tell you what, my dear,’’ said my aunt, one 
morning in the Christmas season when [I left school, ‘‘as 
this knotty point is still unsettled, and as we must not make 
a mistake in our decision if we can help it, I think we had 
better take a little breathing time. In the meanwhile, you 
must try to look at it from a new point of view, and not as 
a schoolboy.’’ 

ilawilleauntes: 

‘Tt has occurred to me,’’ pursued my aunt, ‘‘that a little 
change, and a glimpse of life out of doors, may be useful in 
helping you to know your own mind, and form a cooler judg- 
ment. Suppose you were to take a little journey, now. Sup- 
pose you were to go down into the old part of the country 
again, for instance, and see that—that out-of-the-way woman 
with the savagest of names,’’ said my aunt, rubbing her 
nose, for she could never thoroughly forgive Peggotty for 
being so called. 

“Of all things in the world, aunt, I should like it 
best. ”’ 

‘‘Well,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘that’s lucky, for I should like it, 
too. But it’s natural and rational that you should like it. 
And 1 am very well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, 
will always be natural and rational.’’ 

‘*T hope so, aunt.”’ 

‘‘Your sister, Betsey Trotwood,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘would 


> 


David Gopperfield 327 


have been as natural and rational a girl as ever breathed. 
You’ll be worthy of her, won’t you?’’ 

‘*]. hope [I sat be worthy of Gus aunt. That will be 
enough for me.’ 

‘*It’s a mercy that poor dear baby of a mother of yours 
didn’t live,’’ said my aunt, looking at me approvingly, ‘‘or 
she’d have been so vain of her boy by this time that her 
soft little head would have been completely turned, if there 
was anything of it left to turn.’’ (My aunt always excused 
any weakness of her own in my behalf by transferring it in 
this way to my poor mother.) ‘‘Bless me, Trotwood, how 
you do remind me of her!”’ 

‘‘Pleasantly, I hope, aunt?’’ said I. 

‘*He’s as like her, Dick,’’ said my aunt, emphatically, 
‘‘he’s as like her as she was that afternoon, before she 
began to fret—bless my heart, he’s as like her as he can 
look at me out of his two eyes!”’ 

“Is he, indeed?’’ said Mr. Dick. 

‘And he’s like David, too,’’ said my aunt, decisively. 

‘‘He is very like David!’ said Mr. Dick. 

‘But what I want you to be, Trot,’’ resumed my aunt, 
‘*__T don’t mean physically, but morally; you are very well, 
physically—is, a firm fellow. A fine firm fellow, with a will 
of yourown. With resolution,’’ said my aunt, shaking her 
cap at me, and clinching her hand. ‘‘ With determination. 
With character, Trot—with strength of character that is not 
to be influenced, except on good reason, by anybody, or by 
anything. That’s what I want you to be. That’s what your 
father and mother might both have been, Heaven knows, and 
been the better for it.’’ 

I intimated that I hoped I should be what she described. 

“‘That you may begin, in a small way, to have a reliance 
upon yourself, and to act for yourself,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘I 
shall send you upon your trip, alone. I did think, once, of 
Mr. Dick’s going with you; but, on second thoughts, I shall » 
keep him to take care of me.’’ 

Mr. Dick, for a moment, looked a little disappointed, 


328 Works of Charles Diekens 


until the honor and dignity of having to take care of the 
most wonderful woman in the world restored the sunshine 
to his face. 

‘*Besides,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘there’s the Memorial—”’ 

“Oh, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick, in a hurry, ‘‘I intend, 
Trotwood, to get that done immediately—it really must be 
done immediately! And then it will go in, you know—and 
then’’—said Mr. Dick, after checking himself, and pausing 
a long time, ‘‘there’ll be a pretty kettle of fish!’ 

In pursuance of my aunt’s kind scheme, I was shortly 
afterward fitted out with a handsome purse of money, and 
a portmanteau, and tenderly dismissed upon my expedition. 
At parting, my aunt gave me some good advice, and a good 
many kisses; and said that as her object was that 1 should 
look about me, and should think a little, she would recom- 
mend me to stay a few days in London, if I liked it, either 
on my way down into Suffolk or in coming back. Ina word, 
I was at liberty to do what I would for three weeks or a 
month, and no other conditions were imposed upon my 
freedom than the before-mentioned thinking and looking 
about me, and a pledge to write three times a week and 
faithfully report myself. 

I went to Canterbury first, that I might take leave of 
Agnes and Mr. Wickfield (my old room in whose house 1 
had not yet relinquished), and also of the good doctor. Agnes 
was very glad to see me, and told me that the house had not 
been like itself since I had left it. 

‘‘T am sure I am not like myself when 1 am away,”’ said 
l. ‘‘I seem to want my right hand, whenI miss you. Though 
that’s not saying much; for there’s no head in my right hand, | 
and no heart. Hvery one who knows you consults with you, 
and is guided. by you, Agnes.”’ 

‘‘Every one who knows me spoils me, I believe,’’ she 
answered, smiling. 

‘‘No. It’s because you are like no one else. You are so 
good and so sweet-tempered. You have sucha gentle nature, 
and you are always right.”’ 


David Gopperfield 329 


*“You talk,’’ said Agnes, breaking into a pleasant laugh, 
as she sat at work, ‘‘as if 1 were the late Miss Larkins.’’ | 

‘Come! It’s not fair to abuse my confidence,’’ I an- 
swered, reddening at the recollection of my blue enslaver. 
**But I shall confide in you, just the same, Agnes. I can 
never grow out of that. Whenever I fall into trouble, or 
fall in love, I shall always tell you, if you’ll let me—even 
when I come to fall in love in earnest.”’ | 

‘‘Why, you have always been in earnest!’ said Agnes, 
laughing again. 

‘*Oh! that was as a child, or a schoolboy,” said I, laugh- 
ing in my turn, not without being a little shamefaced. 
“Times are altering now, and I suppose 1 shall be in a 
terrible state of earnestness one day or other. My wonder 
is, that you are not in earnest yourself, by this time, Agnes.”’ 

Agnes laughed again, and shook her head. 

**Oh, I know you are not!’’ said I, ‘‘because if you had 
been, you would have told me. Or at least’’—for I saw a_ 
faint blush in her face—‘‘you would have let me find it out 
for myself. But there is no one that I know of who deserves 
to love you, Agnes. Some one of a nobler character, and 
more worthy altogether than any one I have ever seen here, 
must rise up before I give my consent. In the time to come 
I shall have a wary eye on all admirers, and shall exact a 
great deal from the successful one, I assure you.”’ 

We had gone on, so far, in a mixture of confidential jest 
and earnest that had long grown naturally out of our familiar 
_ relations, begun as mere children. But Agnes, now suddenly 
lifting up her eyes to mine, and speaking in a different man- 
ner, said: 

‘*Trotwood, there is something that 1 want to ask you, 
and that 1 may not have another opportunity of asking for 
a long time, perhaps—something I would ask, | think, of no 
one else. Have you observed’ any gradual alteration in 
papa?’’ 

I had observed it, and had often wondered whether she 
had, too. I must have shown as much, now, in my face; for 


330 Works of Charles Diekens 


her eyes were in a moment cast down, and I saw tears in 
them. 

“‘Tell me what it is,’’ she said, in a low voice. 

‘*] think—shall | be quite plain, Agnes, liking him so 

much 2% 

‘*Yes,’’ she said. 

‘*] think he does himself no good by the habit that has 
increased upon him since I first came here. He is often very 
nervous—or I fancy so.’’ 

‘‘Tt is not fancy,’’ said Agnes, shaking her head. 

‘*‘His hand trembles, his speech is not plain, and his eyes 
look wild. JI have remarked that at those times, and when 
he is least like himself, he is most certain to be wanted on 
some business.’’ 

‘‘By Uriah,” said Agnes. 

‘Yes; and the sense of” being unfit for it, or of not having 
understood it, or of having shown his condition in spite of 
himself, seems to make him so uneasy that next day he is 
worse, and next day worse, and so he becomes jaded and 
haggard. Do not be alarmed by what I say, Agnes; but in 
this state I saw him, only the other evening, lay down his- 
head upon his desk and shed tears like a child.’’ 

Her hand passed softly before my lips while I was yet 
speaking, and in a moment she had met her father at the door 
of the room, and was hanging on his shoulder. The expres- 
sion of her face, as they both looked toward me, 1 felt to be 
very touching. There was such deep fondness for him, and 
gratitude to him for all his love and care, in her beautiful look; . 
and there was such a fervent appeal to me to deal tenderly by 
him, even in my inmost thoughts, and to let no harsh con- 
struction find any place against him; she was, at once, so 
proud of him and devoted to him, yet so compassionate and 
sorry, and so reliant upon me to be so, too, that nothing she 
could have said would have expressed more to me, or moved: 
me more. 

We were to drink tea at the doctor’s. We went there at 
the usual hour; and round the study-fireside found the doctor, 


David Gopperfield 331 


and his young wife, and her mother. The doctor, who made 
as much of my going away as if I were going to China, re- 
ceived me as an honored guest, and called for a log of wood 
to be thrown on the fire, that he might see the face of his old 
pupil reddening in the blaze. 

‘*T shall not see many more new faces in Trotwood’s stead, 
Wickfield,”’ said the doctor, warming his hands; ‘‘I am get- 
ting lazy, and want ease. YF shall relinquish all my young 
people in another six months, and lead a quieter life.”’ 

‘*You have said so, any time these ten years, doctor,’’ Mr. 
Wickfield answered. 

‘But now I mean to do it,’’ returned the doctor. ‘‘My 
first master will succeed me—I am in earnest at last—so 
you'll soon have to arrange our contracts, and to bind us 
firmly to them, like a couple of knaves.”’ 

‘*And to take care,’’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘‘that you’re not 
imposed on, eh?—as you certainly would be in any contract 
you should make for yourself. Well! I am ready. There 
are worse tasks than that, in my calling.’’ 

‘*] shall have nothing to think of, then,’’ said the doctor, 
with a smile, ‘‘but my Dictionary, and this other contract- 
bargain—Annie.”’ 

As Mr. Wickfield glanced toward her sitting at the tea- 
table by Agnes, she seemed to me to avoid his look with such 
unwonted hesitation and timidity that his attention became 
fixed upon her, us if something were suggested to his thoughts. 

‘*There is a post come in from India, 1 observe,’’ he said, 
after a short silence. | 

“By the bye! and letters from Mr. Jack Maldon!’’ said 
the doctor. 

**Indeed !”’ 

‘*Poor dear Jack!’ said Mrs. Markleham, shaking her 
head. ‘‘That trying climate!—like living, they tell me, on 
a sand heap, underneath a burning-glass! He looked strong, 
but he wasn’t. My dear doctor, it was his spirit, not his 
constitution, that he ventured on so boldly. Annie, my dear, 
lam sure you must perfectly recollect that your cousin never 


332 Works of Charles Dickens 


was strong—not what can be called robust, you know,”’ said 
Mrs. Markleham, with emphasis, and looking round upon us 
generally—‘‘from the time when my daughter and himself 
were children, together, and ge ie about, arm-in-arm, the 
livelong day.”’ 

Annie, thus addressed, made no reply. 

‘‘Do I gather from what you say, ma’am, that Mr. Maldon | 
is ill?”? asked Mr. Wickfield. ~ 

IM OVERS: iat! the Old Soldier. ‘‘My dear sir, he’s all 
sorts of things.’’ 

‘‘Except well!’ said Mr. Wickfield. 

‘‘Except well, indeed!’’ said the Old Soldier. ‘‘He has 
had dreadful strokes of the sun, no doubt, and jungle fevers 
and agues, and every kind of thing you can mention. As to 
his liver,’’ said the Old Soldier, resignedly, ‘‘that, of course, 
he gave up altogether when he first went out!’’ 

‘*Does he say all this?’’ asked Mr. Wickfield. 

‘Say? My dear sir,’’ returned Mrs. Markleham, shak- 
ing her head and her fan, ‘‘you little know my poor Jack 
Maldon when you ask that question. Say? Not he. You 
might drag him at the heels of four wild horses first.’’ | 

‘‘Mama!’’ said Mrs. Strong. 

‘‘Annie, my dear,’’ returned her mother, ‘‘once for all, 
I must really beg that you will not interfere with me, unless 
it is to confirm what I say. You know as well as I do that 
your cousin Maldon would be dragged at the heels of any num- 
ber of wild horses—why should I confine myself to four? I 
won’t confine myself to four—eight, sixteen, two-and-thirty, 
rather than say anything calculated to overturn the doctor’s 
plans.”’ 

‘‘Wickfield’s plans,’’ said the doctor, stroking his face, 
and looking penitently at his adviser. ‘‘That is to say, our 
joint plans for him. 1 said myself, abroad or at home.”’ 

‘And I said,’’ added Mr. Wickfield, gravely, ‘‘abroad. 
Il was the means of sending him abroad. It’s my responsi- 
bility.”’ , 

‘‘Oh! Responsibility!’ said the Old. Soldier. ‘‘Kvery- 


David Gopperfield 333 


thing was done for the best, my dear Mr, Wickfield; every- 
thing was done for the kindest and best, we know. But if 
the dear fellow can’t live there, he can’t live there. And if 
he can’t live there, he’ll die there, sooner than he’ll overturn 
the doctor’s plans. I know him,”’ said the Old Soldier, fan- 
“ning herself, in a sort of calm, prophetic agony, ‘‘and I know 
he’ll die there sooner than he’ll overturn the doctor’s plans.”’ 

*‘ Well, well, ma’am,’’ said the doctor, cheerfully, ‘I am 
not bigoted to my plans, and I can overturn them myself. 
I can substitute some other plans. If Mr. Jack Maldon comes 
home on account of ill health, he must not be allowed to go 
back, and we must endeavor to make some more suitable and 
fortunate provision for him in this country.”’ 

Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous speech 
—which, I need not say, she had not at all expected or led up 
to—that she could only tell the doctor it was like himself, and 
go several times through that operation of kissing the sticks 
of her fan, and then tapping his hand with it. After which 
she gently chid her daughter, Annie, for not being more 
demonstrative when such kindnesses were showered, for her 
sake, on her old playfellow; and entertained us with some 
particulars concerning other deserving members of her family, 
whom it was desirable to set on their deserving legs. 

All this time her daughter Annie never once spoke, or 
lifted up her eyes. All this time, Mr. Wickfield had his 
glance upon her as she sat by his own daughter’s side. 

It appeared to me that he never thought of being observed 
by any one; but was so intent upon her, and upon his own 
thoughts in connection with her, as to be quite absorbed.- He 
now asked what Mr. Jack Maldon had actually written in 
reference to himself, and to whom he had written it. 

‘“Why, here,’’ said Mrs. Markleham, taking a letter from 
the chimney-piece above the doctor’s head, ‘‘the dear fellow 
says to the doctor himself—where is it? Oh!—‘I am sorry 
to inform you that my health is suffering severely, and that 
I fear I may be reduced to the necessity of returning home 
for a time, as the only hope of restoration!’ That’s pretty 


334 Works of Charles Dickens 


plain, poor fellow! His only hope of restoration! But 
Annie’s letter is plainer still. Annie, show me that letter 
again.”’ 

‘‘Not now, mama,’’ she pleaded, in a low tone. 

‘‘My dear, you absolutely are, on some subjects, one of 
the most ridiculous persons in the world,’’ returned her mo- 
ther, ‘‘and perhaps the most unnatural to the claims of your 
own family. We never should have heard of the letter at 
all, I believe, unless I had asked for it myself. Do you call 
that confidence, my love, toward Dr. Strong? I am sur- 
prised. You ought to know better.” 

The letter was reluctantly produced; and as I handed it 
to the old lady, 1 saw how the unwilling hand from which 
1 took it trembled. 

‘‘Now, let us see,’’ said Mrs. Markleham, putting her 
glass to her eye, ‘‘where the passage is. ‘The remembrance 
of old times, my dearest Annie’—and so forth—it’s not there. 
‘The amiable old Proctor’—who’s he? Dear me, Annie, how 
illegibly your cousin Maldon writes, and how stupid | am! 
‘Doctor,’ of course. Ah! amiable, indeed!’ Here she left 
off to kiss her fan again, and shake it atethe doctor, who 
was looking at us in a state of placid satisfaction. ‘‘Now I 
have found it. ‘Yow may not be surprised to hear, Annie’ 
—no, to be sure, knowing that he never was really strong; 
what did I say just now?—‘that I have undergone so much 
in this distant place as to have decided to leave it at all haz- 
ards; on sick leave, if I can; on total resignation if that is 
not to be obtained. What I have endured, and do endure 
here, is insupportable.’ And but for the promptitude of that 
best of creatures,’’ said Mrs. Markieham, telegraphing the 
doctor as before, and refolding the letter, ‘‘it would be 
insupportable to me to think of.”’ 

Mr. Wickfield said not one word, though the old lady 
looked to him as if for his commentary on this intelligence; 
but sat severely silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground. 
Long after the subject was dismissed, and other topics occu- 
pied us, he remained so; seldom raising his eyes, unless to 


David Copperfield 335 


rest them for a moment, with a thoughtful frown, upon the 
doctor, or his wife, or both. 

The doctor was very fond of music. Agnes sang with 
great sweetness and expression, and so did Mrs. Strong. 
They sang together, and played duets together, and we had 
quite a little concert. But I remarked two things: first, that 
though Annie soon recovered her composure and was quite 
herself, there was a blank between her and Mr. Wickfield 
which separated them wholly from each other; secondly, that 
Mr. Wickfield seemed to dislike the intimacy between her and 
Agnes, and to watch it with uneasiness. And now, I must 
confess, the recollection of what I had seen on that night 
when Mr. Maldon went away first began to return upon me 
with a meaning it had never had, and to trouble me. The 
innocent beauty of her face was not as innocent to me as it 
had been; 1 mistrusted the natural grace and charm of her 
manner; and when | looked at Agnes by her side, and thought 
how good and true Agnes was, suspicions arose within me 
that it was an ill-assorted friendship. 

She was so happy in it herself, however, and the other was 
so happy, too, that they made the evening fly away as if it 
were but an hour. It closed in an incident which I well re- 
member. They were taking leave of each other, and Agnes 
was going to embrace her and kiss her, when Mr. Wickfield 
stepped between them, as if by accident, and drew Agnes 
quickly away. Then [I saw, as though all the intervening time 
had been canceled, and I were still standing in the doorway 
on the night of the departure, the expression of that night in 
the face of Mrs. Strong, as it confronted his. 

I cannot say what an impression this made upon me, or 
how impossible I found it, when | thought of her afterward, 
to separate her from this look, and remember her face in its 
innocent loveliness again. It haunted me when I got home. 
1 seemed to have left the doctor’s roof with a dark cloud 
lowering on it. The reverence that I had for bis gray head 
was mingled with commiseration for his faith in those who 
were treacherous to him, and with resentment against those 


336 Works of Charles Dickens 


who injured him. The impending shadow of a great afflic- 
tion, and a great disgrace that had no distinct form in it yet, 
fell like a stain upon the quiet place where I had worked and 
played as a boy, and did it a cruel wrong. 1 had no pleas- 
ure in thinking, any more, of the grave old broad-leaved 
aloe-trees which remained shut up in themselves a hundred 
years together, and of the trim, smooth grass plot, and the 
stone urns, and the doctor’s walk, and the congenial sound 
of the Cathedral bell hovering above them all. It was as if 
the tranquil sanctuary of my boyhood had been sacked before 
my face, and its peace and honor given to the winds. 

But morning brought with it my parting from the old 
house, which Agnes had filled with her influence; and that 
occupied my mind sufficiently. 1 should be there again soon, 
no doubt; I might sleep again—perhaps often—in my old 
room; but the days of my inhabiting there were gone, and 
the old time was past. I was heavier at heart when I packed 
up such of my books and clothes as still remained there to 
be sent to Dover than I cared to show to Uriah Heep—who 
was so officious to help me that I uncharitably thought him 
mighty glad that 1 was going. 

1 got away from Agnes and her father, somehow, with 
an indifferent show of being very manly, and took my seat 
upon the box of the London coach. 1 was so softened and 
forgiving, going through the town, that | had half a mind to 
nod to my old enemy the butcher, and throw him five: shill- 
ings to drink. But he looked such a very obdurate butcher 
as he stood scraping the great block in the shop, and, more- 
over, his appearance was so little improved by the loss of 
a front tooth which I had knocked out, that I thought it best 
to make no advances. 

The main object on my mind, I remember, when we got 
fairly on the road, was to appear as old as possible to the 
coachman, and to speak extremely gruff. The latter point 


I achieved at great personal inconvenience; but I stuck to 


it, because I felt it was a grown-up sort of thing. 
‘*You are going through, sir?’’ said the coachman. 


David @opperfield 337 


“Yes, William,’’ I said, condescendingly (I knew him), 
“Tam going.to London. I shall go down into Suffolk after- 
ward.”’ 

“Shooting, sir?’’ said the coachman. 

He knew as well as I did that it was just as likely, at . 
that time of year, I was going down there whaling; but I 
felt complimented, too. 

*‘T don’t know,”’ I said, pretending to be undecided, 
‘whether I shall take a shot or not.’”’ 

‘Birds is got wery shy, 1’m told,”’ said William. 

*‘So I understand,”’ said I. 

‘Ts Suffolk your county, sir?’’ asked William. 

““Yes,’’ I said, with some importance. ‘‘Suffolk’s my 
county.”’ 

‘*1’m told the dumplings is uncommon fine down there,”’ 
said William. 

I was not aware of it myself, but I felt it necessary to 
uphold the institutions of my county, and to evince a fa- 
miliarity with them; so 1 shook my head, as much as to say, 
‘*T believe you!”’ 

**And the Punches,’’ said William. ‘‘There’s cattle! A 
Suffolk Punch, when he’s a good ’un, is worth his weight in 
gold. Did youever breed any Suffolk Punches, yourself, sir?’’ 

‘‘N—no,’’ I said, ‘‘not exactly.’’ 

‘*Here’s a gen’Im’n behind me, Ill pound it,’’ said Wil- 
liam, ‘‘as has bred ’em by wholesale.’’ 

The gentleman spoken of was a gentleman with a very 
unpromising squint, and a prominent chin, who had a tall 
white hat on with a narrow flat brim, and whose close-fitting 
drab trousers seemed to button all the way up outside his legs 
from his boots to his hips. His chin was cocked over the 
coachman’s shoulder, so near to me that his breath quite 
tickled the back of my head; and as I looked round at him, 
he leered at the leaders with the eye with which he didn’t 
squint, in a very knowing manner. 

** Ain’t you?’’-asked William. 

**Ain’t I what?” said the gentleman behind. 


338 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘*Bred them Suffolk Punches by wholesale?’’ 

‘*] should think so,’’ said the gentleman. .‘‘There ain’t 
no sort of ’orse that I ain’t bred, and no sort of dorg. ’Orses 
and dorgs is some men’s fancy. They’re wittles and drink 
to me—lodging, wife, and children—reading, writing, and 
’rithimetic—snuff, tobacker, and sleep.”’ 

‘That ain’t a sort of man to see sitting behind a coach- 
box, is it, though?’’ said William in my ear, as he handled 
the reins. 

IT construed this remark into an indication of a wish that 
he should have my place, so I blushingly offered to resign it. 

‘‘Well, if you don’t mind, sir,’’ said William, ‘‘1 think it 
would be more correct.”’ 

I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life. 
When I booked my place at the coach-office, I had had 
‘*Box-seat’’ written against the entry, and had given the 
bookkeeper half-a-crown. Iwas got up ina special great- 
coat and shawl, expressly to do honor to that distinguished 
eminence; had glorified myself upon it a good deal, and had 
felt that 1 was a credit to the coach. And here, in the very 
first stage, 1 was supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, 
who had no other merit than smelling like a livery-stable, 
and being able to walk across me, more like a fly than a 
human being, while the horses were at a canter! 

A distrust of myself, which has often beset me in life on 
small occasions, when it would have been better away, was 
assuredly not stopped in its growth by this little incident out- 
side the Canterbury coach. It was in vain to take refuge in 
eruffness of speech. I spoke from the pit of my stomach for 
the rest of the journey, but I felt completely extinguished and 
dreadfully young. 

It was curious and interesting, nevertheless, to be sitting 
up there, behind four horses; well-educated, well-dressed, and 
with plenty of money in my pocket; and to look out for the ~ 
places where I had slept on my weary journey. 1 had abun- 
dant occupation for my thoughts, in every conspicuous land- 
mark on the road. When I looked down at the trampers 


David Gopperfield 339 


whom we passed, and saw that well-remembered style of 
face turned up, | felt as if the tinker’s blackened hand were 
in the bosom of my shirt again. When we clattered through 
the narrow street of Chatham, and I caught a glimpse, in 
passing, of the lane where the old monster lived who had 
bought my jacket, I stretched my neck eagerly to look for the 
place where I had sat, in the sun and in the shade, waiting 
for my money. When we came, at last, within a stage of 
London, and passed the veritable Salem House where Mr. 
Creakle had laid about him with a heavy hand, I would 
have given all I had for lawful permission to get down and 
thrash him, and let all the boys out like so many caged 
sparrows. i 

We went to the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, then a 
mouldy sort of establishment in a close neighborhood. A 
waiter showed me into the coffee-room; and a chambermaid 
introduced me to my small bedchamber, which smelled like 
a hackney-coach, and was shut up like a family vault. I 
was still painfully conscious of my youth, for nobody stood in 
any awe of me at all; the chambermaid being utterly in 
different to my opinions on any subject, and the waiter being 
familiar with me, and offering advice to my inexperience. 

“Well, now,’’ said the waiter, in a tone of confidence, 
‘‘what would you like for dinner? Young gentlemen likes 
poultry in general; have a fowl!”’ 

_ I told him, as majestically as I could, that I wasn’t in the 
humor for a fowl. 

**Ain’t you!’’ said the waiter. ‘‘Young gentlemen is . 
generally tired of beef and mutton; have a weal cutlet!’’ 

I assented to this proposal, in default of being able to 
suggest anything else. 

“‘Do you care for taters?’’ said the waiter, with an in- 
sinuating smile, and his head on one side. ‘‘ Young gentle- 
men generally has been overdosed with taters.’’ 

I commanded him, in my deepest voice, to order a veal 
cutlet and potatoes, and all things fitting, and to inquire at 
the bar if there were any letters for Trotwood Copperfield, 


340 Works of @harles Dickens 


_Esquire—which | knew there were not, and couldn’t be, but — 


thought it manly to appear to expect. 

He soon came back to say that there were none (at which 
I was much surprised), and began to lay the cloth for my 
dinner in a box by the fire. While he was so engaged he 
asked me what 1 would take with it, and on my replying 
‘‘Half a pint of sherry,’’ thought it a favorable opportunity, 
I am afraid, to extract that measure of wine from the stale 
leavings at the bottoms of several small decanters. I am of 
this opinion, because while I was reading the newspaper, I 
observed him behind a low wooden partition, which was his 
private apartment, very busy pouring out of a number of those 
_ vessels into one, like a chemist and druggist making up a 
prescription. When the wine came, too, I thought it flat; 
and it certainly had more English crumbs in it than were 
to be expected in a foreign wine in anything like a pure 
state; but 1 was bashful enough to drink it and say nothing. 

Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I 
infer that poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages 
of the process), I resolved to go to the play. It was Covent 
Garden Theater that I chose; and there, from the back of 
a center box, I saw Julius Cesar and the new Pantomime. 
To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and walking 
in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern 
task-masters they had been at school, was a most novel and 
delightful effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of 
the whole show, the influence upon me of the poetry, the 
lights, the music, the company, the smooth stupendous 
changes of glittering and brilliant. scenery, were so dazzling, 
and opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when 
I came out into the rainy street. at twelve o’clock at night, 
I felt as if I had come from the clouds, where 1 had been 
leading a romantic life for ages, to a bawling, splashing, 
link - lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-josiling, 
patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world. . 

[I had emerged by another door, and stood in the street for 
a little while, as if 1 really were a stranger upon earth; but 


David @opperfield 341 


the unceremonious pushing and hustling that I received soon 
recalled me to myself, and put me in the road back to the 
hotel; whither I went, revolving the glorious vision all the 
way, and where, after some porter and oysters, I sat revolv- 
ing it still, at past one o’clock, with my eyes on the coffee- 
room fire. 

I was so filled with the play and with the past—for it was, 
in a manner, like a shining transparency, through which I 
saw my earlier life moving along—that 1 don’t know when 
the figure of a handsome, well-formed young man, dressed 
with a tasteful, easy negligence which I[ have reason to re- 
member very well, became a real presence to me. But I 
recollect being conscious of his company without having 
noticed his coming in—and my still sitting, musing, over 
the coffee-room fire. 

At last I rose to go to bed, much to the relief of the sleepy 
waiter, who had got the fidgets in his legs, and was twisting 
them, and hitting them, and putting them through all kinds 
of contortions in his small pantry. In going toward the door 
1 passed the person who had come in, and saw him plainly. 
T turned directly, came back, and looked again. He did not 
know me, but 1 knew him in a moment. 

At another time I might have wanted the confidence or the 
decision to speak to him, and might have put it off until next 
day, and might have lost him. But, in the then condition of 
my mind, where the play was still running high, his former 
protection of me appeared so deserving of my gratitude, and 
my old love for him overflowed my breast so freshly and 
spontaneously, that I went up to him at once, with a fast- 
beating heart, and said: 

**Steerforth! Won’t you speak to me?”’ 

He looked at me—just as he used to look, sometimes—but 
I saw no recognition in his face. 

‘¢You don’t remember me, I am afraid,’’ said I. 

_ “My God!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘‘It’s little Copper- 
field !”’ 

I grasped him by both hands, and could not let them go. 


342 Works of @harles Dickens 


But for very shame, and the fear that it might displease him, 
I could have held him round the neck and cried. 

‘*T never, never, never was so glad! My dear Steerforth, 
I am so overjoyed to see you!”’ 

‘‘And I am rejoiced to see you, too?’’ he said, shaking my 
hands heartily. ‘‘Why, Copperfield, old boy, don’t be over- 
powered!’”’ And yet he was glad, too, 1 thought, to see how 
the delight I had in meeting him affected me. 

1 brushed away the tears that my utmost resolution had 
not been able to keep back, and I made a clumsy laugh of it, 
and we sat down together, side by side. 

‘‘Why, how do you come to be here?’’ said Steerforth, 
clapping me on the shoulder. 

‘‘T came here by the Canterbury coach, to-day. I have 
been adopted by an aunt down in that part of the country, 
and have just tinished my education there. How do you 
come to be here, Steerforth?”’ . 

‘*Well, IT am what they call an Oxford man,”’ he returned ; 
‘‘that is to say, I get bored to death down there, periodically 
—and I am on my way now to my mother’s. You’re a dey- 
ilish amiable-looking fellow, Copperfield. Just what you used 
to be, now | look at you! Not altered in the least!”’ 

“‘T knew you immediately,’’ I said; “‘but you are more 
easily remembered.’’ 

He laughed as he ran his hand through the clustering 
curls of his hair, and said, gayly: 

‘*Yes, I am on an expedition of duty. My mother lives 
a little way out of town; and the roads being in a beastly 
condition, and our house tedious enough, I remained here 
to-night instead of going on. . I have not been in town half- 
a-dozen hours, and those I have been dozing and grumbling 
away at the play.”’ | 

‘‘T have been at the play, too,’ said 1. ‘‘At Covent 
Garden. What a delightful and magnificent entertainment, 
Steerforth!’’ 

SA en laughed heartily. 

‘‘__My dear young Davy,’’ he said, clapping me on the 


David Gopperfield 343 


snoulder again, ‘‘you are a very Daisy. The daisy of the 


field, at sunrise, is not fresher than you are! I have been 
at Covent Garden, too, and there never was a more miser- 
able business—Holloa, you, sir?’’ 

This was addressed to the waiter, who had been very at- 
tentive to our recognition, at a distance, and now came for- 
ward deferentially. 

‘“Where have you put my friend, Mr. Copperfield?’ said 

Steerforth. 
‘*Beg your pardon, sir?”’ 

‘“Where does he sleep? What’s his number? You know 
what 1 mean,’’ said Steerforth. 

‘Well, sir,’’ said the waiter, with an apologetic air, ‘*Mr. 
Copperfield is at present in forty-four, sir.’’ 

‘‘And what the devil do you mean,”’ retorted Steerforth, 
“by putting Mr. Copperfield into a little loft over a stable?’’ 

‘“Why, you see, we wasn’t aware, sir,’’? returned the 
waiter, still apologetically, ‘‘as Mr. Copperfield was any- 
ways particular. We can give Mr. Copperfield seventy- 
two, sir, if it would be preferred. Next you, sir.’’ 

“Of course it would be preferred,’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘And 
do it at once.’’ 

The waiter immediately withdrew to make the exchange. 
Steerforth, very much amused at my having been put into 
forty-four, laughed again, and clapped me on the shoulder 
again, and invited me to breakfast with him next morning 
at ten o’clock—an invitation I was only too proud and happy 
to accept. It being now pretty late, we took our candles and’ 
went upstairs, where we parted with friendly heartiness at 
his door, and where I found my new room a great improve- 
ment on my old one, it not being at all musty, and having 
an immense four-post bedstead in it, which was quite a little 
landed estate. Here, among pillows enough for six, I soon 
fell asleep in a blissful condition, and-dreamed of ancient 
Rome, Steerforth, and friendship, until the early morning 
coaches, rumbling out of the archway underneath, made me 
dream of thunder and the gods. 


b44 Works of Charles Dickens 


CHAPTER SEWENT 
STEERFORTH’S HOME 


WHEN the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight 
o’clock and informed me that my shaving-water was out-— 
side, I felt severely the having no occasion for it, and blushed 
in my bed. The suspicion that she laughed, too, when she 
said it, preyed upon my mind all the time I was dressing, 
and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and guilty air 
when I passed her on the staircase as I was going down to 
breakfast. 1 was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being 
younger than I could have wished, that for some time I could 
not make up my mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble 
circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with a 
broom, stood peeping out of window at King Charles on 
horseback, surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches and 
Jooking anything but regal in a drizzling rain and a dark- 
brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the 
gentleman was waiting for me. * 

It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth ex- 
pecting me, but in a snug, private apartment, red-curtained | 
and Turkey-carpeted, where the fire burned bright, and a 
fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table covered with a 
clean-cloth, and a cheerful miniature of the room, the fire, the 
breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining in the little round 
mirror over the sideboard. I was rather bashful at first, 
Steerforth being so self-possessed and elegant, and superior 
to me in all respects (age included); but his easy patronage 
soon put that to rights, and made me quite at home. I could 
not enough admire the change he had wrought in the Golden 
Cross, or compare the dull, forlorn state I had held yesterday 
with this morning’s comfort and this morning’s entertain- 
ment. As to the waiter’s familiarity, it was quenched as if 


David Copperfield 345 


it had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in 
sackcloth and ashes. 

“‘Now, Copperfieid,’’ said Steerforth, when we were alone, 
‘*T should like to hear what you are doing, and where you are 
going, andall about you. Ifeel as if you were my property.”’ 

Glowing with pleasure to find that he had still this inter- 
est in me, I told him how my aunt had proposed the little 
expedition that I had before me, and whither it tended. 

‘‘As you are in no hurry, then,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘come 
home with me to Highgate, and stay a day or two. You 
will be pleased with my mother—she is a little vain and prosy 
about me, but that you can forgive her—and she will be 
pleased with you.”’ 

**T should like to beas sure of that as you are kind enough 
to say you are,’’ | answered, smiling. 

**Oh!’’? said Steerforth, ‘‘every one who likes me-has a 
claim on her that is sure to be acknowledged.”’ 

‘“Then I think 1 shall be a favorite,’’ said I. . 

“‘“Good!’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘Come and prove it. We 
will go and see the lions for an hour or two—it’s something 
to have a fresh fellow like you to’show them to, Copperfield 
—and then we’ll journey out to Highgate by the coach.”’ 

_1 could hardly believe but that I was in a dream, and that 
I should wake presently in number forty-four, to the solitary 
box in the coffee-room, and the familiar waiter again. After 
I had written to my aunt and told her of my fortunate meet- 
ing with my admired old school-fellow, and my acceptance 
of his invitation, we went out in a hackney-chariot and saw 
a Panorama and some other sights, and took a walk through 
the Museum, where I could not help observing how much 
Steerforth knew, on an infinite variety of subjects, and of 
how little account he seemed to make his knowledge. 

“You'll take a high degree at college, Steerforth,’’ said 
1, “‘if you have not done so already; and they will have 
good reason to be proud of you.”’ 

‘‘T take a degree!’’ cried Steerforth. ‘‘Not 1! my dear 
Daisy—will you mind my calling you Daisy?”’ 


346 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘*Not at all!’ said I. 

““That’s a good fellow! My dear Daisy,’’ said Steer- 
forth, laughing, ‘‘1 have not the least desire or intention to 
distinguish myself in that way. I1 have done quite sufficient 
for my purpose. 1 find that I am heavy company enough for 
myself as I am.”’ 

‘*But the fame—’’ I was beginning. 

‘You romantic Daisy!’ said Steerforth, laughing still 
more heartily; ‘‘why should 1 trouble myself, that a parcel 
of heavy-headed fellows may gape and hold up their hands? 
Let them do it at some other man. There’s fame for him, 
and he’s welcome to it.”’ 

I was abashed at having made so great a mistake, and was 
glad to change the subject. Fortunately it was not difficult 
to do, for Steerforth could always pass from one subject to 
another with a carelessness and lightness that were his own. 

Lunch succeeded to our sight-seeing, and the short winter 
day wore away so fast that it was dusk when the stage-coach 
stopped with us at an old brick house at Highgate on the 
summit of the hill. An elderly lady, though not very far 
advanced in years, with’ a proud carriage and a hand- 
some face, was in the doorway as we alighted, and greeting 
Steerforth as ‘‘My dearest James,’’ folded him in her arms. 
To this lady he presented me as his mother, and she gave 
me a stately welcome. 

It was a genteel, old-fashioned house, very quiet and 
orderly. From the windows of my room 1 saw all London 
_ lying in the distance like a great vapor, with here and there 
some lights twinkling through it. I had only time, in dress- 
ing, to glance at the solid furniture, the framed pieces of 
work (done, | supposed, by Steerforth’s mother when she 
was a girl), and some pictures in crayons of ladies with 
powdered hair and bodices, coming and going on the walls, 
as the newly-kindled fire crackled and sputtered, when I was 
called to dinner. | 

There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight, 
short figure, dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with 


> 


David @opperfield , d47 


some appearance of good looks, too, who attracted my atten- 
tion—perhaps because I had not expected to see her; perhaps 
because I found myself sitting opposite to her; perhaps be- 
cause of something really remarkable in her. She had black 
hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar 
upon her lip. It was an old scar—I should rather call it 
seam, for it was not discolored, and had healed years ago-— 
which had once cut through her mouth, downward toward 
the chin, but was now barely visible across the table, ex- 
cept above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had 
altered. I concluded in my own mind that she was about 
thirty years of age, and that she wished to be married. She 
was a little dilapidated—like a house—with having been so 
long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good 
looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting 
fire within her, which found a vent. in her gaunt eyes. 

She was introduced as Miss Dartle, and both Steerforth 
and his mother called her Rosa. I found that she lived 
there, and had been for a long time Mrs. Steerforth’s com- 
panion. It appeared to me that she never said anything she 
wanted to say outright; but hinted it, and made a great deal 
more of it by this practice. For example, when Mrs. Steer- 
forth observed, more in jest than earnest, that she feared 
her son led but a wild life at college, Miss Dartle put in 
thus: 

“‘Oh, really? You know how ignorant 1 am, and that I 
only asked for information, but isn’t it always so? I thought 
that kind of life was on all hands understood to be—eh?”’ 

“Tt is education for a very grave profession, if you mean 
that, Rosa,’’ Mrs. Steerforth answered with some coldness. 

“Qh! Yes! That’s very true,’’ returned Miss Dartle. 
‘*But isn’t it, though?—1 want to be put right if I am wrong 
—isn’t it really?”’ 

‘*Really what?’’ said Mrs. Steerforth. 

“Oh! You mean it’s not!’ returned Miss Dartle. 
*‘Well, I’m very glad to hear it! Now, I know what to 
do! That’s the advantage of asking. I shall never allow 


348 Works of Charles Dickens 


people to talk before me about wastefulness and profligacy, 
and so forth, in connection with that life, any more.”’ 

‘‘And you will be right,’’ said Mrs. Steerforth. ‘‘My 
son’s tutor is a conscientious gentleman; and, if 1 had not 
implicit reliance on my son, I should have reliance on him.’’ 

‘‘Should you?’’ said Miss Dartle. ‘‘Dear me! Con- 
scientious, is he? Really conscientious now ?”’ 

‘*Yes, [ am convinced of it,’’ said Mrs. Steerforth, 

‘‘How very nice!’’ exclaimed Miss Dartle. ‘‘What a 
comfort! Really conscientious? Then he’s not—but of 
course he can’t be, if he’s really conscientious. Well, I 
shall be quite happy in my opinion of him from this time. 
You can’t think how it elevates him in my opinion to know 
for certain that he’s really conscientious.”’ 

Her own views of every question, and her correction of 
everything that was said to which she was opposed, Miss 
Dartle insinuated in the same way—sometimes 1 could not 
conceal from myself with great power, though in contradic- 
tion even of Steerforth. An instance happened before din- 
ner was done. . Mrs. Steerforth speaking to me about my in- 
tention of going down into Suffolk, 1 said at hazard how 
glad 1 should be if Steerforth would only go there with me; 
and explaining to him that 1 was going to see my old nurse, 
and Mr. Peggotty’s family, I reminded him of the boatman 
whom he had seen at school. 

‘Oh! That bluff fellow!’ said Steerforth. ‘‘He hada 
son with him, hadn’t he?’’ 

‘“‘No. That was his nephew,’’ I replied; ‘‘whom he 
adopted, though,.as a son. He has a very pretty little 
niece, too, whom he adopted as a daughter. In short, his ~ 
house (or rather his boat, for he lives in one, on dry land) is 
full of people who are objects of his generosity and kind- 
ness. You would be delighted to see that household.”’ 

“‘Should 1?’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘ Well, I think 1] should. 
I must see what can be done. It would be worth a journey 
—not to mention the pleasure of a journey with you, Daisy— 
to see that sort of people together, and to make one of ’em.”’ 


David Gopperfield 349 


My heart leaped with a new hope of pleasure. But it 
was in reference to the tone in which he had spoken of ‘‘that 
sort of people’’ that Miss Dartle, whose sparkling eyes had 
been watchful of us, now broke in again. 

*‘Oh, but really? Do tell me. Are they, though?’’ she 
said. : 

‘*Are they what? And are who what?’’ said Steerforth. 

“That sort of people.—Are they really animals and clods, 
and beings of another order? I want to know so much.”’ 

‘‘Why, there’s a pretty wide separation between them and 
us,’’? said Steerforth, with indifference. ‘‘They are not to 
be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is 
not to be shocked, or hurt very easily. They are wonder- - 
fully virtuous, I daresay—some people contend for that, at 
least, and 1am sure 1 don’t want to contradict them—but 
they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful 
that, like their coarse rough skins, they are not easily 
wounded.’’ 

“Really !’’ said Miss Dartle. ‘‘ Well, I don’t know now 
when I have been better pleased than to hear that. It’s so 
consoling! It’s such a delight to know that when they suf- 
fer they don’t feel. Sometimes I have been quite uneasy for 
that sort of people; but now I shall dismiss the idea of them 
altogether. Live and learn. I had my doubts, I confess, 
but now they’re cleared up. 1 didn’t know, and now I do 
know, and that shows the advantage of asking—don’t it?”’ 

1 believed that Steerforth had said what he had in jest, 
or to draw Miss Dartle out; and I expected him to say as - 
much when she was gone, and we two were sitting before 
the fire. But he merely asked me what | thought of her. 

‘‘She is very clever, is she not?’’ I asked. 

“‘Clever! She brings everything to a grindstone,’’ said 
Steerforth, ‘‘and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own 
face and figure these years past. She has worn herself away 
by constant sharpening. She is all edge.’’ . 

‘‘What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip!’’ I said. 

Steerforth’s face fell, and he paused a moment. 


3 


350 Works of Charles Diekens 


‘‘Why, the fact is,’’ he returned, ‘‘Z did that.’’ 

‘*By an unfortunate accident.”’ 

‘‘No. I was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and 
I threw a hammer at her. A promising young angel | must 
have been.’’ 

I was deeply sorry to have touched on such a painful 
theme, but that was useless now. 

‘‘She has borne the mark ever since, as you see,”’ said 
Steerforth; ‘‘and she’ll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests 
in one—though I can hardly believe she will ever rest any- 
where. She was the motherless child of a sort of cousin of 
my father’s. He died one day. My mother, who was then 
a widow, brought her here to be company to her. She has 
a couple of thousand pounds of her own, and saves the in- 
terest of it every year, to add to the principal. There’s the 
history of Miss Rosa Dartle for you.’”’ 

‘‘And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?”’’ 
said I. 

‘‘Humph!’’ retorted Steerforth, looking at the fire. 
‘‘Some brothers are not loved over much; and some love— 
but help yourself, Copperfield! We’ll drink the daisies of 
the field, in compliment to you; and the lilies of the valley, 
that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment to me—the 
more shame for me.’’ A moody smile that had overspread 
his features cleared off as he said this merrily, and he was 
his own frank, winning self again. 

T could not help glancing at the scar with a painful inter- 
est when we went in to tea. It was not long before I ob- 
served that it was the most susceptible part of her face, and 
that, when she turned pale, that mark altered first, and be- 
came a dull lead-colored streak, lengthening out to its full 
extent, like a mark in invisible ink brought to the fire. 
There was a little altercation between her and Steerforth 
about a cast of the dice at backgammon—when I thought 
her, for one moment, in a storm of rage; and then I saw it 
start forth like the old writing on the wall. 

It was no matter of wonder to me to find Mrs. Steerforth 


David Gopperfield 351 


devoted to her son. She seemed to be able to speak or think 
about nothing else. She showed me his picture as an infant 
in a locket, with some of his baby-hair in it; she showed me 
his picture as he had been when | first knew him; and she 
wore at her breast his picture as he was now. All the let- 
ters he had ever written to her she kept in a cabinet near her 
own chair by the fire; and she would have read me some of 
them, and I should have been very glad to hear them, too, if 
he had not interposed, and coaxed her out of the design. 

“Tt was at Mr. Creakle’s, my son tells me, that you first 
became acquainted,’’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as she and I were - 
talking at one table, while they played backgammon at an- 
other. ‘‘Indeed, I recollect his speaking, at that time, of a 
pupil younger than himself who had taken his fancy there; 
but your name, as you may suppose, has not lived in my 
memory.”’ 

‘‘He was very generous and noble to me in those days, I 
assure you, ma’am,’’ said I, ‘‘and I stood in need of such a 
friend. I should have been quite crushed without him.”’ 

‘‘He is always generous and noble,’’ said Mrs. Steerforth, 
proudly. 

I subscribed to this with all my heart, God knows. She 
knew | did; for the stateliness of her manner already abated 
toward me, except when she spoke in praise of him, and then 
her air was always lofty. . : 

‘Tt was not a fit school generally for my son,’’ said she; 
‘‘far from it; but there were particular circumstances to be 
considered at the time of more importance even than that . 
selection. My son’s high spirit made it desirable that he 
should be placed with some man who felt its superiority, and 
would be content to bow himself before it; and we found 
such a man there.’’ 

I knew that, knowing the fellow. And yet I did not de- 
spise him the more for it, but thought it a redeeming quality 
in him; if he could be allowed any grace for not resisting 
one so irresistible as Steerforth. 

‘“My son’s great capacity was tempted on there by a feel- 


352 Works of Charles Diekens 


ing of voluntary emulation and conscious pride,’’ the fond 
lady went on to say. ‘‘He would have risen against all con- 
straint; but he found himself the monarch of the place, and 
he haughtily determined to be worthy of his station. It was 
like himself.’’ 

I echoed, with all my heart and soul, that it was like him- 
self. 

‘‘So my son took, of his own will, and on no compulsion, 
to the course in which he can always, when it is his pleasure, 
outstrip every competitor,’’ she pursued. ‘‘My son informs 
me, Mr. Copperfield, that you were quite devoted to him, 
and that when you met yesterday you made yourself known 
to him with tears of joy. I should be an affected woman, if 
1 made any pretense of being surprised by my son’s inspir- - 
ing such emotions; but I cannot be indifferent to any one 
who is so sensible of his merit, and I am very glad to see 
you here, and can assure you that he feels an unusual friend- 
ship for you, and that you may rely on his protection.’’ 

Miss Dartle played backgammon as eagerly as she did 
everything else. If I had seen her first at the board, I should 
have fancied that her figure had got thin, and her eyes had 
got large, over that pursuit and no other. But I am very 
much mistaken if she missed a word of this, or lost a look of 
mine as I received it with the utmost pleasure, and, honored 
by Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, felt older than I had done 
since I left Canterbury. 

When the evening was pretty far spent, and a tray of 
glasses and decanters came in, Steerforth promised, over the - 
fire, that he would seriously think of going down into the 
country with me. There was no hurry, he said; a week 
hence would do; and his mother hospitably said the same. 
While we were talking, he more than once called me Daisy; 
which brought Miss Dartle out again. | 

‘*But really, Mr. Copperfield,’’ she asked, ‘‘is it a nigh 
name? And why does he give it you? Is it—eh?—because 
he thinks you young and innocent? I am so stupid in these » 
things.”’ 


David Gopperfield . 353 


1 colored in replying that I believed it was. 

“Oh!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘‘Now, 1 am glad to know 
that. I ask for information, and I am glad to know it. He 
thinks you young and innocent; and so you are his friend. 
Well, that’s quite delightful.”’ 

She went to bed soon after this, and Mrs. Steerforth re- 
tired, too. Steerforth and I, after lingering for half an hour 
over the fire, talking about Traddles, and all the rest of them 
at old Salem House, went upstairs together. Steerforth’s 
room was next to mine, and I went in to look atit. It was 
a picture of comfort, full of easy chairs, cushions, and foot- 
stools, worked by his mother’s hand, and with no sort of 
thing omitted that could help torender it complete. Finally, 
her handsome features looked down on her darling from a 
portrait on the wall, as if it were even something to her that 
her likeness should watch him while he slept. 

I found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this 
time, and the curtains drawn before the windows and round 
the bed, giving it a very snug appearance. I sat downina 
great chair upon the hearth to meditate on my happiness; 
and had enjoyed the contemplation of it for some time, when 
I found a likeness of Miss Dartle looking eagerly at me from 
above the chimney-piece. 

It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a stave 
look. The painter hadn’t made the scar, but J made it; and 
there it was, coming and going—now confined to the upper 
lip as [had seen it at dinner, and now showing the whole ~ 
extent of the wound inflicted by the hammer, as I had seen 
it when she was passionate. 

1 wondered peevishly why they couldn’t put her any: 
where else instead of quartering her on me. To get rid of 
her, 1 undressed quickly, extinguished my light, and went to 
bed. But, as I fell asleep, I could not forget that she was 
still there looking, “‘ls it really, though? 1 want to know;”’ 
and, when I awoke in the night, I found that I was uneasily 
asking all sorts of people in my dreams whether it really was 


or not—without knowing what I meant. 
Vou. II—(12) 


364. Works of Charles Dickens 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 
LITTLE EM’LY.., 


THERE was a servant in that house, a man who, I under- 
stood, was usually with Steerforth, and had come into his 
service at the University, who was in appearance a pattern 
of respectability. I believe there never existed in his station 
a nore respectable-looking man. He was taciturn, soft- 
footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, 
always at hand when wanted, and never near when not 
wanted; but his great claim to consideration was his re- 
spectability. He had not a pliant face, he had rather a stiff 
neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging to 
it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit 
of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to 
use it oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity 
that he had he made respectable. If his nose had been up- 
side down, he would have made that respectable. He sur- 
rounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and 
walked secure init. It would have been next to impossible 
to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly re- 
spectable. Nobody could have thought of putting him ina 
livery, he was so highly respectable. To have imposed any 
derogatory work upon him would have been to inflict a 
wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable man. 
And of this, I noticed, the women-servants in the household 
were so intuitively conscious that they always did such 
work themselves, and generally while he read the paper by 
the pantry fire. 

Such a self-contained man I never saw. But in that 
quality, as in every other he possessed, he only seemed to be 
the more respectable. Even the fact that no one knew his 
Christian name seemed to form a part of his respectability. 


David Copperfield 355 


Nothing could be objected against his surname Littimer, by 
which he was known. Peter might have been hanged, or 
Tom transported; but Littimer was perfectly respectable. 

It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of re- 
spectability in the abstract, but 1 felt particularly young in 
this man’s presence. How old he was himself I could not 
euess—and that again went to his credit on the same score; 
for in the calmness of respectability he might have num- 
bered fifty years as well as thirty. 

Littimer was in my room in the morning before I was 
up, to bring me that reproachful shaving-water, and to put 
out my clothes. When I undrew the curtains and looked 
out of bed, I saw him, in an equable temperature of respect- 
ability, unaffected by the east wind of- January, and not 
even breathing frostily, standing my boots right and left in 
the first dancing position, and blowing specks of dust off my 
coat as he laid it down like a baby. 

I gave him good-morning, and asked him what o’clock it 
was. He took out of his pocket the most respectable hunt- 
ing-watch I ever saw, and preventing the spring with his 
thumb from opening far, looked in at the face as if he were 
consulting an oracular oyster, shut it up again, and said, if I 
pleased, it was half-past eight. 

‘*Mr. Steerforth will be glad. to hear how you have rested, 
sir.”’ “ 

‘“‘Thank you,’’ said I, ‘‘very well, indeed. Is Mr. Steer- 
forth quite well?”’ 

“Thank you, sir, Mr. Steerforth is tolerably well.’? An- © 
other of his characteristics—no use of superlatives. <A cool 
calm medium always. 

‘‘TIs there anything more I can have the honor of doing 
for you, sir? The warning-bell will ring at nine; the family 
take breakfast at half-past nine.”’ 

‘*Nothing, 1 thank you.’’ 

*T thank you, sir, if you please;’’ and with that, and 
with a little inclination of his head, when he passed the bed- 
side, as an apology for correcting me, he went out, shutting 


356 Works of Charles Diekens 


the door as delicately as if 1 had just fallen into a sweet 
sleep on which my life depended. 

Every morning we held exactly this conversation—never 
any more, and never any less—and yet, invariably, however 
far I might have been lifted out of myself overnight, and 
advanced toward maturer years by Steerforth’s companion- 
ship, or Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, or Miss Dartle’s con- 
versation, in the presence of this most respectable man I 
became, as our smaller poets sing, ‘‘a boy again.’’ 

He got horses for us; and Steerforth, who knew every- 
thing, gave me lessons in riding. He provided foils for us, 
and Steerforth gave me lessons in fencing—gloves, and I 
began, of the same master, to improve in boxing. It gave 
me no manner of-.concern that Steerforth should find me a 
novice in these sciences, but I never could bear to show my 
want of skill before the respectable Littimer. 1 had no rea- 
son to believe that Littimer understood such arts himself; he 
never led me to suppose anything of the kind, by so much as. 
the vibration of one of his respectable eyelashes; yet when- 
ever he was by, while we were practicing, I felt myself the 
greenest and most inexperienced of mortals. . 

Iam particular about this man, because he made a par- 
ticular effect on me at that time, and because of what took 
place thereafter. 

The week passed away in a most*delightful manner. It 
passed rapidly, as may be supposed, to one entranced as I 
was; and yet it gave me so many occasions for knowing 
Steerforth better, and admiring him more in a thousand re- 
spects, that at its close I seemed to have been with him for a 
much longer time. A dashing way he had of treating me 
like a plaything, was more agreeable to me than any be- 
havior he could have adopted. It reminded me of our old 
acquaintance; it seemed the natural sequel of it; it showed 
me that he was unchanged; it relieved me of any uneasiness 
I might have felt in comparing iny merits with his, and 
measuring my claims upon his friendship by any equal 
standard; above all, it was a familiar, unrestrained, affec- 


David Gopperfield 357 


tionate demeanor that he used toward no one else. As he 
had treated me at school differently from all the rest, I joy- 
fully believed that he treated me in life unlike any other 
friend he had. I believed that I was nearer to his heart than 
any other friend, and my own heart warmed with attachment 
to him. 

He made up his mind to go with me into the country, and 
the day arrived for our departure. He had been doubtful at 
first whether to take Littimer or not, but decided to leave 
him at home. The respectable creature; satisfied with his 
lot whatever it was, arranged our portmanteaus on the little 
carriage that was to take us into London, as if they. were in- 
tended to defy the shocks of ages, and received my modestly 
proffered donation with perfect tranquillity. 

We bade adieu to Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle, with 
many thanks on my part, and much kindness on the devoted 
mother’s. The last thing I saw was Littimer’s unruffled 
eye; fraught, as I fancied, with the silent conviction that I 
was very young indeed. 

What I felt, in returning so auspiciously to the old fa- 
miliar places, I shall not endeavor to describe. We went 
down by the mail. I was so concerned, I recollect, even for 
the honor of Yarmouth, that when Steerforth said, as we 
drove through its dark streets to the inn, that, as well as 
he could make out, it was a good, queer, out-of-the-way kind 
of hole, I was highly pleased. We went to bed on our ar- 
rival (I observed a pair of dirty shoes and gaiters in connec- 
tion with my old friend the Dolphin as we passed that door), 
and breakfasted late in the morning. Steerforth, who was in 
great spirits, had been strolling about the beach before I was 
up, and had made acquaintance, he said, with half the boat- 
men in the place. Moreover, he had seen, in the distance, 
what he was sure must be the identical house of Mr. Peg- 
gotty, with smoke coming out of the chimney; and had had 
a great mind, he told me, to walk in and swear he was my- 
self grown out of knowledge. 

‘When do you propose to introduce me there, Daisy?’’ he 


358 Works of Charles Dickens 


said. ‘‘lam at your disposal. Make your own arrange- 
ments.”’ 

‘‘Why, I was thinking that this evening would be a good 
time, Steerforth, when they are all sitting round the fire. Ll 
should like you to see it when it’s snug, it’s such a curious” 
place.”’ 

‘‘So be it!’ returned Steerforth. ‘*‘This evening.”’ 

‘‘T shall not give them any notice that we are here, 
you know,” said I, delighted. ‘‘We must take them by 
surprise.’ 

‘“‘Oh, of course! It’s no fun,’’ said Steerforth, ‘Sunless 
we take them by surprise. Let us see the natives in their 
aboriginal condition.’’ 

‘“‘Though they are that sort of people that you men- 
tioned,’’ I returned. 

‘‘Aha! What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, 
do you?’’ he exclaimed, with a quick look. ‘‘Confound the 
girl, Iam half afraidof her. She’s likea goblin tome. But 
never mind her. Now, what are you going to do? You are 
going to see your nurse, I suppose?’’ 

‘Why, yes,’’ I said, ‘‘I must see Peggotty first of all.”’ 

‘*Well,’’ replied Steerforth, looking at his watch. ‘‘Sup- 
pose I deliver you up to be cried over for a couple of hours. 
Is that long enough?’’ 

l answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through 
it in that time, but that he must come also; for he would find 
that his renown had preceded him, and that he was almost 
as great a personage as | was. 

‘‘T’]1] come anywhere you like,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘or do 
anything you like. Tell me where to come to, and in two 
hours I’ll produce myself in any state you please, sentimental 
or comical,’’ 

I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of 
Mr. Barkis, carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere; and, on 
this understanding, went out alone. There was a sharp, 
bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea was crisp and clear; 
the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not much warmth; 


> 


David Copperfield 359 


and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and 
lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could 
have stopped the people in the streets and shaken hands with 
them. 

The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we 
have only seen as children always do, I believe, when we 
vo back to them. But I had forgotten nothing in them, and 
found nothing changed, until I came to Mr. Omer’s shop. 
OmrER & JORAM was now written up, where OMER used to 
be; but the inscription, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, 
FUNERAL FURNISHER, &C., remained as it was. ; 

My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shop-door, 
after I had read these words from over the way, that I went 
across the road and looked in. There was a pretty woman 
at the back of the shop, dancing a little child in her arms, 
while another little fellow clung to her apron. I had no 
difficulty in recognizing either Minnie or Minnie’s children. 
The glass-door of the parlor was not open; but in the work- 
shop across the yard I could faintly hear the old tune playing, 
as if it had never left off. 

‘‘Is Mr. Omer at home?’’ said 1, entering. ‘‘l should 
like to see him, for a moment, if he is.”’ 

“‘Oh, yes, sir, he is at home,’’ said Minnie; ‘‘this weather 
don’t suit his asthma out of doors. Joe, call your grand- 
father.’”’ 

The little fellow, who was holding her apron, gave such 
a lusty shout that the sound of it made him bashful, and he 
buried his face in her skirts, to her great admiration. I 
heard a heavy puffing and blowing coming toward us, and 
soon Mr. Omer, shorter-winded than of yore, but not much 
older looking, stood before me. 

“‘Servant, sir,’’ said Mr. Omer. ‘‘What can I do for you, 
sir?”’ 

‘“You can shake hands with me, Mr. Omer, if you please,”’ 
said I, putting out my own. ‘‘You were very good-natured 
to me once, when I am afraid I didn’t show that I thought 
so.”’ 


360 Works of @harles Dickens 


‘‘Was I, though?’ returned the old man. ‘‘I’m glad to 
hear it, but 1 don’t remember when. Are you sure it was 
me?’’ | . 

**Quite.”’ 

*‘T think my memory has got as short as my breath,”’ 
said Mr. Omer, looking at me and shaking his head; ‘‘for 
I don’t remember you.”’ 

‘*Don’t you remember your coming to the coach to meet 
‘me, and my having breakfast here, and our riding out to 
Blunderstone together; you, and I, and Mrs. Joram, and Mr. 
Joram, too--who wasn’t her husband then?”’ 

‘‘Why, Lord bless my soul!’’ exclaimed Mr. Omer, after 
being thrown by his surprise into a fit of coughing, ‘‘you 
don’t say so! Minnie, my dear, you recollect? Dear me, 
vogsathe party was a lady, I think?’’ 

‘‘My mother,’’ I rejoined. 

‘*To—be—sure,’’ said Mr. Omer, touching my waistcoat 
with his forefinger, ‘cand there was a little child, too! There 
was two parties. The little party was laid along with the 
other party. Over at Blunderstone it was, of course. Dear 
me! And how have you been since?’’ 

Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had been, too. 

‘‘Oh, nothing to grumble at, you know,’’ said Mr. Omer. 
‘‘T find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a 
man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most 
of it. That’s the best way, ain’t it?”’ 

Mr. Omer coughed again, in consequence of laughing, 
and was assisted out of his fit by his daughter, who now 
stood close beside us, dancing her smallest child on the 
counter. 

‘‘Dear me!’’ said Mr. Omer. ‘‘Yes, to be sure. - Two 
parties! Why, in that very ride, if you'll believe me, the 
day was named for my Minnie to marry Joram. ‘Do name 
it, sir,’ says Joram. ‘Yes, do, father,’ says Minnie. And 
now he’s come into the business And look here! The 
youngest!’ 

Minnie laughed, and stroked her banded hair upon her 


David Copperfield . 361 


temples, as her father put one of his fat fingers into the hand 
of the child she was dancing on the counter. 

‘‘Two parties, of course!’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his 
head retrospectively. ‘‘Ex-actly so! And Joram’s at work, 
at this minute, on a gray one with silver nails, not this meas- 
urement’’—the measurement of the dancing child upon the 
counter—‘‘by a good two inches. — Will you take something ?”’ 

I thanked him, but declined. | 

‘‘Let me see,’’? said Mr. Omer. ‘‘Barkis’s the carrier’s 
wife—Peggotty’s the boatman’s sister—she had something 
to do with your family? She was in service there, sure?’’ 

My answering in the affirmative gave him great satis- 
faction. | 

‘Tl believe my breath will get long next, my memory’s 
eetting so much so,’’ said Mr. Omer. ‘‘ Well, sir, we’ve got 
a young relation of hers here, under articles to us, that has 
as elegant a taste in the dressmaking business—I assure you 
I don’t believe there’s a duchess in England can touch her.”’ 

**Not little Em’ly?”’’ said I, involuntarily. 

‘“*Kim’ly’s her name,”’ said Mr. Omer, ‘‘and she’s little 
too. But if you’ll believe me, she has such a face of her own 
that half the women in this town are mad against her.”’ 

‘“Nonsense, father!’’ cried Minnie. 

“‘My dear,’’ said Mr. Omer, ‘‘I don’t say it’s the case — 
with you,’’ winking at me, “‘but I say that half the women 
in Yarmouth—ah! and in five mile round—are mad against 
that girl.’’ 

‘Then she should have kept to her own station in life, 
father,’’ said Minnie, ‘‘and not have given them any hold to 
talk about her, and then they couldn’t have done it.”' 

‘‘Couldn’t have done it, my dear!’’ retorted Mr. Omer. 
*‘Couldn’t have done it! Is that your knowledge of life? 
What is there that any woman couldn’t do, that she shouldn’t 
do—especially on the subject of another woman’s good looks?’’ 

I really thought it was all over with Mr. Omer, after he 
had uttered this libelous pleasantry. He coughed to that 
extent, and his breath eluded all his attempts to recover it 


362 Works of Charles Dickens 


with that obstinacy, that I fully expected to see his head go 
down behind the counter, and his little black breeches, with 
the rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees, come quiver- 
ing up in a last ineffectual struggle. 

At length, however, he got better, though he still panted 
hard, and was so exhausted that he was obliged to sit on the. 
stool of the shop-desk. 

‘“You see,’’ he said, wiping his head, and breathing with 
difficulty, ‘‘she hasn’t taken much to any companions here; ° 
she hasn’t taken kindly to any particular acquaintances and 
friends, not to mention sweethearts. In consequence, an ill- 
natured story got about, that Em’ly wanted to be a lady. 
Now, my opinion is, that it came into circulation principally 
on account of her sometimes saying at the school that if she 
was a lady, she would like to do so and so for her uncle— 
don’t you see?—and buy him such and such fine things.”’ 

‘‘T assure you, Mr. Omer, she has said so to me,”’’ I re- 
turned, eagerly, ‘‘when we were both children.”’ 

Mr. Omer nodded his head and rubbed his chin. ‘‘Just 
so. Then out of a very little, she could dress herself, you 
see, better than most others could out of a deal, and that 
made things unpleasant. Moreover, she was rather what 
might be called wayward—l’ll go so far as to say what I 
should call wayward myself,’’ said Mr. Omer—‘‘didn’t know 
her own mind quite—a little spoiled—and couldn’t, at first, 
exactly bind herself down. No more than that was ever said 
against her, Minnie?”’ 

‘‘No, father,’’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘‘That’s the worst, I 
believe.’’ 

‘‘So, when she got a situation,’’ said Mr. Omer, ‘‘to keep 
a fractious old lady company, they didn’t very well agree, 
and she didn’t stop. At last she came here, apprenticed for 
three years. Nearly two of ’em are over, and she has been 
as good a girl as ever was. Worth any six! Minnie, is she 
worth any six, now?”’ 

‘‘Yes, father,’’’ replied Minnie, ‘‘Never say J detracted 
from her!’’ 


David Copperfield 363 


““Very good,’’ said Mr. Omer. ‘‘That’s right. And so, 
young gentleman,’’ he added, after a few moments’ further 
rubbing of his chin, ‘‘that you may not consider me long- 
winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that’s all about 
hing 

As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of 
Km’ly, I had no doubt that she was near. On my asking 
now if that were not so, Mr. Omer nodded yes, and nodded 
toward the door of the parlor. My hurried inquiry if I might 
peep in, was answered with a free permission; and, looking 
through the glass, I saw her sitting at her work. 1 saw her, 
a most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes 
that had looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly 
upon another child of Minnie’s who was playing near her, 
with enough willfulness in her bright face to justify what 
I had heard; with much of the old capricious coyness lurking 
in it, but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure, but 
what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what 
was on a good and happy course. 

The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had 
left off—alas! it was the tune that never does leave off —was 
beating, softly, all the while. 

‘“‘Wouldn’t you like to step in,’’ said Mr. Omer, ‘‘and 
speak to her? Walk in and speak to her, sir! Make your- 
self at home!’’ 

I was too bashful to do so then-—I was afraid of confusing 
her, and I was no less afraid of confusing myself; but I in- 
formed myself of the hour at which she left of an evening, — 
in order that our visit might be timed accordingly; and 
taking leave of Mr. Omer and his pretty daughter, and her 
little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty’s. 

Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The 
moment I knocked at the door she opened it, and asked me 
what I pleased to want. I looked at her with a smile, but 
she gave me no smile in return. I had never ceased to 
write to her, but it must have been seven years since we 
had met. 


364 Works of Charles Dickens 


“Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma’am?’’ I said, feigning to 
speak roughly to her. 

‘*He’s at home, sir,’’ returned Peggotty; ‘‘but he’s bad 
abed with the rheumatics.”’ 

‘*Don’t he go over to Blunderstone now?”’ I asked. 

‘‘When he’s well he do,’’ she answered. 

‘““Do you ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?’’ 

She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick 
movement of her hands toward each other. 

‘*Because I want to ask a question about a house there, 
that they call the—what is it?—the Rookery,”’ said I. 

She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an 
undecided, frightened way, as if to keep me off. 

‘*Peggotty!’’ I cried to her. 

She cried, ‘‘My darling boy!’ and we both burst into - 
tears, and were locked in one another’s arms. 

What extravagancies she committed; what laughing and 
crying over me; what pride she showed, what joy, what 
sorrow that she whose pride and joy I might have been, 
could never hold me in a fond embrace, I have not the heart 
to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young ~ 
in me to respond tv her emotions. I had never laughed and 
cried in all my life, I daresay—not even to her—more freely 
than I did that morning. | 

‘*Barkis will be so glad,’’ said Peggotty, wiping her eyes 
with her apron, ‘‘that it’11 do him more good than pints of 
liniment. May I go and tell him you are here? Will you 
come up and see him, my dear?’’ 

Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of 
the room as easily as she meant to; for as often as she got 
to the door and looked round at me, she came back again to 
have another laugh, and another cry upon my shoulder. At 
last, to make the matter easier, I went upstairs with her, ~ 
and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a 
word of preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before 
that invalid. 

He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too 


David @opperfield | 365 


rheumatic to be shaken hands with, but he begged me to 
shake the tassel on the top of his nightcap, which I did most 
cordially. When I sat down by the side of the bed, he said 
that it did him a world of good to feel as if he was driving 
me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face 
upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed 
to be nothing but a face—like a conventional cherubim—he 
looked the queerest object I ever beheld. : 

‘*What name was it as I wrote up in the cart, sir?’’ said 
Mr. Barkis, with a slow rheumatic smile. 

‘*Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that 
matter, hadn’t we?’’ 

**? was willin’ a long time, sir?’’ said Mr. Barkis. | 

**A long time,’’ said I. © 

*‘And | don’t regret it,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘‘Do you re- 
member what you told me once, about her making all the 
apple parsties and doing all the cooking?”’ 

*“Yes, very well,’’ I returned. 

‘It was as true,’’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘‘as turnipsis. It was 
as true,’’ said Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was 
his only means of emphasis, ‘‘as taxesis. And nothing’s truer 
than them.”’ 

Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent 
to this result of his reflections in bed; and I gave it. 

‘**Nothing’s truer than them,’’ repeated Mr. Barkis; ‘‘a 
man as poor as I am finds that out in his mind when he’s 
laid up. I’m a very poor man, sir.”’ 

**] am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.”’ 

‘*A very poor man, indeed 1 am,’’ said Mr. Barkis. 

Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under 
the bedclothes, and with a purposeless, uncertain grasp took 
hold of a stick whch was loosely tied to the side of the bed. 
After some poking about with this instrument, in the course 
of which his face assumed a variety of distracted expressions, 
Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end of which had been 
visible to me all the time. Then his face became composed. 

**Old clothes,’’ said Mr. Barkis. 


366 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘Oh!’ said I. 

‘*T wish it was Money, sir,’’ said Mr. Barkis. 

‘*T wish it was, indeed,’’ said 1. 

‘‘But it AIN’T,’’? said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes 
as wide as he possibly could. 

I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, 
turning his eyes more gently to his wife, said: 

‘*She’s the usefulest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. 
All the praise that any one can give to C. P. Barkis, she 
deserves, and more! My dear, you’ll get a dinner to-day, 
for company; something good to eat and drink, will you?”’ 

I should have protested against this unnecessary demon- 
stration in my honor, but that I saw Peggotty, on the oppo- 
site side of the bed, extremely anxious I should not. So I 
held my peace. 

Tit nee got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my 
dear,’’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘‘but I’m a little tired. If you and 
Mr. David will leave me for a short nap, Pll try and find it 
when I wake.”’ 

We left the room in compliance with this request. When 
we got outside the door Peggotty informed me that Mr. 
Barkis, being now ‘‘a little nearer’’ than he used to be, al- 
ways resorted to this same device before producing a single 
coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of agonies 
in crawling out of bed alone and taking it from that unlucky 
box. In effect we presently heard him uttering suppressed 
groans of the most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding 
racked him in every joint; but while Peggotty’s eyes were 
full of compassion for him, she said his generous impulse 
would do him good, and it was better not to check it. So he 
groaned on until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have 
no doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending 
to have just woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce 
a guinea from under his pillow. His satisfaction in which 
happy imposition on us, and in having preserved the im- 
penetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a sufficient com- 
pensation to him for all his tortures. 


David Copperfield 367 


I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth’s arrival, and it was 
not long before he came. I am persuaded she knew no 
difference between his having been a personal benefactor 
of hers and a kind friend to me, and that she'would have 
received him with the utmost gratitude and devotion in any 
case. But his easy, spirited good-humor; his genial manner, 
his handsome looks, his natural gift of adapting himself to 
whomsoever he pleased, and making direct, when he cared 
to do it, to the main point of interest in anybody’s heart, 
bound her to him wholly in five minutes. His manner to 
me, alone, would have won her. But, through all these 
causes combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of ado- 
ration for him before he left the house that night. 

He stayed there with me to dinner—if I were to say will- 
ingly, 1 should not half express how readily and gayly. He 
went into Mr. Barkis’s room like light and air, brightening 
and refreshing it as if he were healthy weather. There was 
no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but 
in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossi- 
bility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which 
was so graceful, so natural and agreeable that it overcomes 
me even now, in the remembrance. 

We made merry in the little parlor, where the Book of 
Martyrs, unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the 
desk as of old, and where I now turned over its terrific pict- 
ures, remembering the old sensations they had awakened, but 
not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what she called 
my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her. 
hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at 
Steerforth, hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case. 

“‘Of course,’’ he said. ‘‘You’ll sleep here while we stay, 
and I shall sleep at the hotel.’’ 

‘‘But to bring you so far,’’ I returned, ‘‘and to separate, 
seems bad companionship, Steerforth.’”’ 

‘Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally 
belong!’ he said. ‘‘What is ‘seems’ compared to that!’ It 
was settled at once 


x 


368 Works of Charles Dickens 


He maintained all: his delightful qualities to the last, un- 
til we started forth, at eight o’clock, for Mr. Peggotty’s boat. 
Indeed, they were more and more brightly exhibited as the 
hours went on; for 1 thought even then, and I have no 
doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his determi- 
nation to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of percep- 
tion, and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If 
any one had told me, then, that all this was a brilliant game, 
played for the excitement of the moment, for the employ- 
ment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love of superiority, in 
a mere wasteful, careless course of winning what was worth- 
less to him, and next minute thrown away—I say, if any one 
had told me such a lie that night, 1 wonder in what manner 
of receiving it my indignation would have found a vent. 

Probably only in an increase, had that been possible, of 
the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship with which I 
walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands, toward the 
old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully 
than it had sighed and moaned upon the night when I first 
darkened Mr. Peggotty’s door. 

“‘This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?”’ 

‘‘Dismal enough in the dark,’’ he said; ‘‘and the sea 
roars as if it were hungry for us. Is that the boat, where 
I see a light yonder?’’ 5 

‘‘That’s the boat,’’ said I. 

‘‘And it’s the same I saw this morning,’’ he returned. 
‘‘T came straight to it, by instinct, I suppose.”’ 

We said no more as we approached the light, but made 
softly for the door. I laid my hand upon the latch; and 
whispering Steerforth to keep close to me, went in. 

A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, 
at the moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands; which 
latter noise, | was surprised to see, proceeded from the gen- 
erally disconsolate Mrs. Gummidge. But Mrs. Gummidge 
was not the only person there who was unusually excited. — 
Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with uncommon satisfae- 
tion, and laughing with all his might, held his rough arms 


David @opperfield 369 


wide open, as if for little Em’ly to run into them; Ham, 
with a mixed expression in his face of admiration, exulta- 
tion, and a lumbering sort of bashfulness that sat upon him 
very well, held little Em/’ly by the hand, as if he were pre- 
senting her to Mr. Peggotty; little EKm/’ly herself, blushing 
and shy, but delighted with Mr. Peggotty’s delight, as her 
joyous eyes expressed, was stopped by our entrance (for she 
saw us first) in the very act of springing from Ham to nestle 
in Mr. Peggotty’s embrace. In the first glimpse we had of 
them all, and at the moment of our passing from the dark - 
cold night into the warm light room, this was the way in 
which they were all employed—Mrs. Gummidge in the back- 
ground, clapping her hands like a mad woman. 

The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our 
going in, that one might have doubted whether it had ever 
been. Iwas in the midst of the astonished family, face to 
face with Mr. Peggotty, and holding out rays hand to him, 
when Ham shouted: 

**Mas’r Davy! it’s Mas’r Davy! 

In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, 
and asking one another how we did, and telling one another 
how glad we were to meet, and all talking at once. Mr. 
Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see us, that he did 
not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again 
shaking hands with me and then with Steerforth, and then 
_ with me, and then ruffling his shaggy hair all over his head, 
and laughing with such glee and triumph that it was a treat 
to see him. 

‘‘Why, that you two gent’Imen—gent’Imen growed— 
should come to this here roof to-night, of all nights in my 
life,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘‘is such a thing as never happened 
afore, 1 do rightly believe. EZm’ly, my darling, come here! 
Come here, my little witch! Theer’s Mas’r Davy’s friend, 
my dear! Theer’s the gent’lman as you have heerd on, 
Em’ly. He comes to see you, along with Mas’r Davy, on 
the brightest night of your uncle’s life as ever was or will 
be, Gorm the t’other one, and horroar for it!”’ 


yt) ae Works of Charles Dickens 


After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with ex- 
traordinary animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of 
his large hands rapturously on each side of his niece’s face, 
and kissing it a dozen times, laid it with a gentle pride and 
love upon his broad chest, and patted it as if his hand had 
been a lady’s. Then he let her go; and as she ran into the 
little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon us, 
quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction. 

‘‘If you two gent’lmen—gent’Imen growed now, and such 
gent’lmen—’’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘‘So th’are, so th’are!’’ cried Ham. ‘‘ Well said! So 
th’are. Mas’r Davy bor—gent’lmen growed—so th’are!”’ 

‘If you two gent’lmen, gent’lmen growed,’’ said Mr. 
Peggotty, ‘‘don’t ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, 
when you understand matters, ll arks your pardon. EKm/’ly, 
my dear!—She knows I’m a-going to tell,’’ here his delight 
broke out again, ‘‘and has made off. Would you be so good 
as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?”’ 

Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared. 

‘“‘If this ain’t,’’ said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among 
us by the fire, ‘‘the brightest night o’ my life, I’m a shellfish 
—biled, too—and more I can’t say. This here little Em’ly, 
sir,’’? in a low voice to Steerforth, ‘‘her as. you see a-blushing 
here just now—’’ 

Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expres- 
sion of interest, and of participation in Mr. Peggotty’s feel-. 
ings, that the latter answered him as if he had spoken. 

‘“To be sure,’’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘That’s her, and so 
she is. Thankee, sir.’’ 

Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have 
said so, too. | 

‘‘This here little Em’ly of ours,’’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘Shas 
been, in our house, what I suppose (I’m a ignorant man, but 
that’s my belief) no one but a little bright-eyed creetur can 
be in a house. She ain’t my child; I never had one; but I 
couldn’t love her more. You understand! I couldn’t do it.’’ 

‘*T quite understand,’”’ said Steerforth 


David @opperfield 371 


‘‘] know you do, sir,’’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘‘and 
thankee again. Mas’r Davy, he can remember what she 
was; you may judge for your own self what she is; but 
neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and 
will be to my loving art. I am rough, sir,’’ said Mr. Peg- 
gotty, ‘‘I am as rough as a sea porkypine; but no one, un- 
less, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our 
little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,’’ sinking his 
voice lower yet, ‘‘that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gum- 
midge neither, though she has a world of merits.’’ 

Mr. Peggotty ruffled his hair again with both hands, as a 
further preparation for what he was going to say, and went 
on with a hand upon each of his knees. 

‘*There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, 
from the time when her father was drownded; as had seen 
her constant; when a babby, when a young gal, when a 
woman. Not much o’ a person to look at, he warn’t,’’ said 
Mr. Peggotty, ‘‘something 0’ my own build—rough—a good 
deal o’ the sou’-wester in him—wery salt—but, on the whole, 
a honest sort of a chap, with his art in the right place.’”’ 

I thought + had never seen Ham grin to anything like the 
extent to which he sat grinning at us now. 

‘‘What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,’’ said 
Mr. Peggotty, with his face one high noon of enjoyment; 
“but he loses that there art of his to our little Em’ly. He 
follers her about, he makes hisself a sort o’ servant to her, 
he loses in a great measure his relish for his wittles, and in’ 
the long run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I 
could wish myself, you see, that our little Km’ly was in a 
fair way of being married. I could wish to see her, at all 
ewents, under articles to a honest man as had a right to de- 
fend her. I don’t know how long 1 may live, or how soon I 
may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any night, in 
a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the 
town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I 
couldn’t make no head against, I could go down quieter for 
thinking ‘There’s a man ashore there, iron-true to my little 


3%2 Works of Charles Dickens 


Em’ly, God bless her, and no wrong can touch my Em/’ly 
while so be as that man lives.’ ”’ 

Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right 
arm, as if he were waving it at the town-lights for the last 
time, and then, exchanging a nod with Ham, whose eye he 
caught, proceeded as before. 

‘*Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big 
enough, but he’s bashfuller than a little un, and he don’t 
like. So J speak. ‘What! Him!’ says Em’ly. ‘Him that 
I’ve know’d so intimate so many years, and like so much! 
Oh, uncle! I never can have him. He’s such a good fellow!’ 
I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to her than ‘My dear, 
you’re right to speak out, you’re to choose for yourself, 
you’re as free as a little bird!’ Then I aways to him, and I 
says, ‘I wish it could have been so, but it can’t. But you 
can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you 
was with her, like a man.’ He says to me, a shaking of my 
hand, ‘1 will!’ he says. And he was—honorable and man- 
ful—for two year going on, and we was just the same at 
home here as afore.”’ 

Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its expression 
with the various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its 
former triumphant delight, as he laid a hand upon my knee 
and a hand upon Steerforth’s (previously wetting them both, 
for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided the fol- 
lowing speech between us: 

‘* All of a sudden, one evening—as it might be to-night— 
comes little Em’ly from her work, and him with her! There 
ain’t so much in that, you’ll say. No, because he takes care 
on her like a brother, arter dark, and indeed afore dark, and 
at all times. But this tarpaulin chap, he takes hold of her 
hand, and he cries out to me joyful: ‘Look here! This is 
to be my little wife!’ And she says, half-bold and half-shy, 
and half a laughing and half a crying: ‘Yes, uncle! If you 
please.’—If 1 please,’’ cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head 
in an ecstasy at the idea; ‘‘Lord, as if I should do anythink 
else!—‘If you please, I am steadier now, and I have thought 


David @opperfield 373 


better of it, and Ill be as good a little wife as 1 can to him, 
for he’s a dear, good fellow.’ Then Missis Gummidge, she 
claps her hands like a play, and youcomein. There! the 
murder’s out!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘‘You come in! It 
took place this here present hour; and here’s the man that’ll 
marry her, the minute she’s out of her time.”’ 

Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. 
Peggotty dealt him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of con- 
fidence and friendship; but feeling called upon to say some- 
thing to us, he said, with much faltering and great diffi- 
culty : | 

‘‘She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy—when 
you first come—when 1 thought what she’d grow up to be. 
I see her grow up—gent’lmen—like a flower. Id lay down 
my life for her—Mas’r Davy—oh! most content and cheer- 
ful! She’s more to me—gent’Imen—than—she’s all to me 
that ever I can want, and more than ever 1—than ever I 
could say. I—I love her true. There ain’t a gent’lman in 
all the land—nor yet sailing upon all the sea—that can love 
his lady more than 1 love her, though there’s many a com- 
mon man—would say better—what he meant.”’ 

I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham 
was now, trembling in the strength of what he felt for the 
pretty little creature who had won his heart. I thought the 
simple confidence reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by 
himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected by the 
story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by 
the recollections of my childhood, 1 don’t know. Whether 1 
had come there with any lingering fancy that I was still to 
love little Em’ly, 1 don’t know. TI know that 1 was filled with 
pleasure by all this; but at first with an indescribably sen- 
sitive pleasure that a very little would liave changed to pain. 

. Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the pre- 
vailing chord among them with any skill, 1 should have 
made a poor hand of it. But it depended upon Steerforth; 
and he did it with such address, that in a few minutes we 
were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be. 


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“Mr. Peggotty,’’ he said, ‘‘you are a thoroughly good 
fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are to-night. My 
hand upon it! Ham, 1 give you joy, my boy. My hand 
upon that, too. Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a brisk one 
—and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece 
to come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I 
shall go. Any gap at your fireside on such a night—such a 





PRESENTLY THEY BROUGHT HER TO THE FIRESIDE, VERY MUCH CONFUSED AND VERY SHY 


gap least of all—l wouldn’t make for the wealth of the 
Indies.’”’ 

So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little 
Km/’ly. At first little Km’ly didn’t like to come, and then 
Ham went. Presently they brought her to the fireside, very 
much confused, and very shy—but she soon became more as- 
sured when she found how gently and respectfully Steerforth 
spoke to her; how skillfully he avoided anything that would 
embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and 
ships, and tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the 


David Copperfield 375 


time when he had seen Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how 
delighted he was with the boat and all belonging to it; how 
lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought us, by de- 
grees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away 
without any reserve. 

Km/’ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, 
and listened, and her face got animated, and she was charm- 
ing. Steerforth told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which 
arose out of his talk with Mr. Peggotty), as if he saw it all 
before him—and little Km’ly’s eyes were fastened on him all 
the time, as if she saw it, too. He told us a merry advent- 
ure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gayety as if 
the narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us—and little 
Emly laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, 
and we all laughed (Steerforth, too), in irresistible sympathy 
with what was so pleasant and light-hearted. He got Mr. 
Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, ‘‘ When the stormy winds 
do blow, do blow, do blow,’’ and he sang a sailor’s song 
himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have 
almost fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round 
the house, and murmuring low through our unbroken silence, 
was there to listen. 

As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despond- 
ency with a success never attained by any one else (so Mr. 
Peggotty informed me), since the decease of the old one. He 
left her go little leisure for being miserable that she said next 
day she thought she must have been bewitched. 

But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or 
the conversation. When little Em’ly grew more coura- 
geous, and talked (but still bashfully) across the fire to me, 
of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up shells and 
pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used 
to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and red- 
dened, casting these looks back on the pleasant old times, so 
unreal to look at now; he was silent and attentive, and ob- 
served us thoughtfully. She sat, at this time, and all the 
evening, on the old locker in her old little corner by the fire 


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—Ham beside her, wiiere I used to sit. I could not satisfy 
myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or 
ina maidenly reserve before us, that she kept quite close to 
the wall, and away from him; but I observed that she did so 
all the evening. 

As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took 
our leave. We had had some biscuit and dried. fish for sup- 
per, and Steerforth had produced from his pocket a full flask 
of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men now with- 
out a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they 
all stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they 
could upon our road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em’ly 
peeping after us from behind Ham, and heard her soft voice 
calling to us to be careful how we went. 

‘‘A most engaging little Beauty!’ said Steerforth, taking 
my arm. ‘‘Well! It’s a quaint place, and they are quaint 
company; and it’s quite a new sensation to mix with them.”’ 

‘‘How fortunate we are, too,’’ I returned, ‘‘to have ar- 
rived to witness their happiness in that intended marriage. 
1 never saw people so happy. How delightful to see it, and 
to be made the sharers in their honest joy as we have 
been.’’ 

‘‘That’s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl, isn’t 
he?’’ said Steerforth. 

He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that 
I felt a shock in this unexpected and cold reply. But turn- 
ing quickly upon him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I an- 
swered, much relieved: 

‘‘Ah! Steerforth. 1t’s well for you to joke about the 
poor. You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide 
your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When 
I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely 
you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman’s, or 
humor a love like my old nurse’s, I know that there is not 
a joy or sorrow, not an emotion of such people, that can be 
indifferent to you. And 1 admire and love you for it, Steer- 
forth, twenty times the more.’’ 


David Gopperfield 377 


He stopped, and, looking in my face, said: ‘‘Daisy, 1 be- 
lieve you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!”’ 

Next moment he was gayly singing Mr. Peggotty’s song, 
as we walked at a round pace back to Yarmouth. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 
SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE 


STEERFORTH and I stayed for more than a fortnight in 
that part of the country. We were very much together, I 
need not say; but occasionally we were asunder for some 
hours ata time. He was a good sailor, and I was but an 
indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. 
Peggotty, which was a favorite amusement of his, 1 gener- 
ally remained ashore. My occupation of Peggotty’s spare 
room put a constraint upon me from which he was free— 
for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis all 
day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas 
Steerforth, lying at the inn, had nothing to consult but his 
own humor. Thus it came about that I heard of his mak- 
ing little treats for the fishermen at Mr. Peggotty’s house of 
eall, ‘‘The Willing Mind,’’ after I was in bed, and of his 
being afloat, wrapped in fisherman’s clothes, whole moon- 
light nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at 
flood. By this time, however, I knew that his restless nat- 
ure and bold spirits delighted to find a vent in rough toil and 
hard weather, as in any other means of excitement that pre- 
sented itself freshly to him; so none of his proceedings sur- 
prised me. 

Another cause of our being sometimes apart was, that I 
had naturally an interest in going over to Blunderstone, and 
revisiting the old familiar scenes of my childhood; while 
Steerforth, after being there once, had naturally no great in- 
terest in going there again. Hence, on three or four days 


378 Works of Charles Diekens 


that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an 
early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no 
idea how he employed his time in the interval, beyond a gen- 
eral knowledge that he was very popular in the place, and 
had twenty means of actively diverting himself where an- 
other man might not have found one. 

For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrim- 
ages was to recall every yard of the old road as I went along 
it, and to haunt the old spots, of which I never tired. I 
haunted them, as my memory had often done, and lingered 
among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I 
was faraway. The grave beneath the tree, where both my 
parents lay—on which I had looked ont, when it was my 
father’s only, with such curious feelings of compassion, and 
by which | had stocd, so desolate, when it was opened to re- 
ceive my pretty mother and her baby—the grave which Peg- 
gotty’s own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made 
a garden of, | walked near by the hour. It lay a little off 
the churchyard path in a quiet corner, not so far removed 
but I could read the names upon the stone as-I walked to 
and fro, startled by the sound of the church-bell when it 
struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice tome. My 
reflections at these times were always associated with the fig- 
ure 1 was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was 
todo. My echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were 
as constant to that as if I had come home to build my castles 
in the air at a living mother’s side. 

There were great changes in my old home. The ragged 
nests, so long deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees 
were lopped and topped out of their remembered shapes. ‘The 
garden had run wild, and half the windows of the house were 
shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor lunatic gentle- 
man, and the people who took care of him. He was always 
sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; 
and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went 
upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the 
rosy mornings when 1 peeped out of that same little window 


David Gopperfield 379 


in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the 
light of the rising sun. 

Our old neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to 
South America, and the rain had made its way through the 
roof of their empty house, and stained the outer walls. Mr. 
Chillip was married again to a tall, raw-boned, high-nosed 
wife, and they had a weazened little baby, with a heavy head 
that it couldn’t hold up, and two weak, staring eyes, with 
which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever 
been born. 

It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure 
that I used to linger about my native place, until the redden- 
ing winter sun admonished me that it was time to start on 
my returning walk. But, when the place was left behind, 
and especially when Steerforth and I were happily seated 
over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think 
of having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, 
when I went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the 
leaves of the crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a 
little table), remembered with a grateful heart how blessed I 
was in having such a friend as Steerforth, such a friend as 
Peggotty, and such a substitute for meee I had lost as my 
excellent and generous aunt. 

My nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these 
long walks, was bya ferry. Itlanded me on the flat between 
the town and the sea, which I could make straight across, and 
so save myself a considerable circuit by the highroad. Mr. 
Peggotty’s house being on that waste-place, and not a hun- 
dred yards out of my track, I always looked in as 1 went by. 
Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and we 
went on together through the frosty air and gathering fog 
toward the twinkling lights of the town. 

One dark evening, when | was later than usual—for 1 
had, that day, been making my parting visit to Blunder- 
stone, aS we were now about to return home—l found him 
alone in Mr. Peggotty’s house, sitting thoughtfully before the 
fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was 


380 Works of Charles Dickens 


quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might 
easily have been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps 
fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but even my - 
entrance failed to rouse him. I was standing close to him, 
looking at him, and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in 
his meditations. 

He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoul- 
der that he made me start, too. 

‘*You come upon me,’’ he said, almost angrily, “‘likea 
reproachful ghost!’’ 

‘‘T was obliged to announce myself somehow,”’ I replied. 
‘*Have I called you down from the stars?’’ 

‘*No,’’ he answered. ‘‘No.’’ 

‘‘Up from anywhere then?”’ said I taking my seat near him. 

‘**T was looking at the pictures in the fire,’’ he returned. 

‘‘But you are spoiling them for me,”’ said I, as he stirred 
it quickly with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a 
train of red-hot sparks, that went careering up the little chim- 
ney, and roaring out into the air. 

‘“*You would not have seen them,’’ hereturned. ‘‘1 detest 
this mongrel time, neither day nor night. How late you are! 
Where have you been?”’ 

‘‘T have been taking leave of my usual walk,”’ said I. 

‘‘And I have been sitting here,’’ said Steerforth, glancing 
round the room, ‘‘thinking that all the people we found so 
glad on the night of our coming down, might—to judge from 
the present wasted air of the place—be dispersed, or dead, or 
come to I don’t know what harm. David,'l wish to God 1 
had had a judicious father these last twenty years!”’ 

‘‘My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?”’ 

**f wish, with all my soul, I had been better guided!’ he 
exclaimed. ‘‘I wish, with all my soul, I could guide myself 
better.”’ | 

There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite 
amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have 
supposed possible. 

‘lt would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout 


David @opperfield ' 881 


of a nephew,” he said, getting up and leaning moodily 
against the chimney-piece, with his face toward the fire, 
‘than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times 
wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in 
this Devil’s bark of a boat, within the last half hour!’’ 

I was so confounded by the alteration in him that at first 
I could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his 
head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire. 
At length I begged him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell 
me what had occurred to cross him so unusually and to let 
me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to advise him. 
Before | had well concluded, he began to laugh—fretfully at 
first, but soon with returning gayety. 

“Tut, 1t’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!’ he replied. ‘‘I told 
you at the inn in London | am heavy company for myself 
sometimes. 1 have been a nightmare to myself, just now-- 
must have had one, I think. At odd dull times, nursery tales 
come up into the memory, unrecognized for-what they are. 
I believe 1 have been confounding myself with the bad boy 
who ‘didn’t care,’ and became food for lions—a grander kind 
of going to the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the 
horrors have been creeping over me from head to foot. I 
have been afraid of myself.’’ 

‘You are afraid of nothing else, I think,’’ said I. 
‘Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of, 
too,’? he answered. ‘‘Well! Soit goes by! Iam not about 
to be hipped again, David; but I tell you, my good fellow, 
once more, that it would have been well for me (and for more 
than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!’ 

His face was always full of expression, but I never saw 
it express such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said 
_ these words, with his glance bent on the fire. 

‘‘So much for that!’ he said, making as if he tossed some- 
thing light into the air, with his hand. 

‘©* Why, being gone, I am a man again,’ 
like Macbeth. And nowfordinner! If I have not (Macbeth- 
_ like) broken up the feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.”’ 


382 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘But where are they all, I wonder!’’ said I. 

‘‘God knows,’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘After strolling to the 
ferry looking for you, I strolled in here and found the place 
deserted. That set me thinking, and you found me think- 
ng 

The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket explained 
how the house had happened to be empty. She had hurried 
out to buy something that was needed against Mr. Peggotty’s 
return with the tide, and had left the door open in the mean- 
whilg, lest Ham and little Em’ly, with whom it was an early 
night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, 
after very much improving Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits by a 
cheerful salutation, and a jocose embrace, took my arm and 
hurried me away. . 

He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gum- 
midge’s, for they were again at their usual flow, and he was 
full of vivacious conversation as we went along. 

‘‘And so,’’ he said, gayly, ‘‘we abandon this buccaneer 
life to-morrow, do we?”’ 

‘“‘So we agreed,’’ I returned. ‘‘And our places by the 
coach are taken,’ you know.”’ 

‘*Ay, there’s no help for it, I suppose,’’ said Steerforth. 
‘‘T have almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the 
world but to go out tossing on the sea here. I wish there 
was not.”’ 

‘As long as the novelty should last,’’ said I, laughing. 

‘*Like enough,’’ he returned; ‘‘though there’s a sarcastic 
meaning in that observation for an amiable piece of innocence 
like my young friend. Well! I daresay I am a capricious 
fellow, David. I know 1 am; but while the iron 7s hot, I’ 
can strike it vigorously, too. I could pass a reasonably good 
examination already, as a pilot in these waters, | think.”’ 

‘‘Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,’’ I returned. 

**A nautical phenomenon, eh?’’ laughed Steerforth. 

‘“Indeed he does, and you know how truly; knowing how 
ardent you are in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you 
can master it. And that amazes me most in you, Steerforth 


David Qopperfield 383 


—that you should be contented with such fitful uses of your 
powers.”’ 

‘*Contented?’’? he answered, merrily. ‘‘I am never con- 
tented, except with your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As 
to fitfulness, I have never learned the art of binding myself 
to any of the wheels on which the Ixions of these days are 
turning round and round. I missed it somehow in a bad 
apprenticeship, and now don’t care about it.—You know I 
have bought a boat down here?’’ 

‘‘What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!’’ I 
exclaimed, stopping-—for this was the first I had heard of 
it. ‘*When you may never care to come near the place again!’’ 

‘‘T don’t know that,’’ he returned. ‘‘I have taken a fancy 
to the place. At all events,’’ walking me briskly on, ‘‘1 
have bought a boat that was for sale—a clipper, Mr. Peg- 
gotty says; and so she is—and Mr. Peggotty will be master 
of her in my absence.’’ 

‘Now | understand you, Steerforth!’’ said I, exultingly. 
**You pretend you have bought it for yourself, but you have 
really done so to confer a benefit onhim. Imight have known 
as much at first, knowing you. My dear, kind Steerforth, 
how can I tell you what I think of your generosity ?”’ 

“‘Tush!’ he answered, turning red. ‘‘The less said, the 
better.”’ 

‘‘Didn’t I know?”’ cried I, ‘‘didn’t 1 say that there was 
not joy, or sorrow, or any emotion, of such honest hearts that 
was indifferent to you?”’ 

‘‘Ay, ay,’’ he answered, ‘‘you told me all that. There 
let it rest, we have said enough!”’ 

Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he 
made so light of it, 1 only pursued it in my thoughts as we 
went on at even a quicker pace than before. 

‘“‘She must be newly rigged,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘and 1 
shall leave Littimer behind to see it done, that I may know 
she is quite complete. Did I tell you Littimer had come 
down?”’ 


INO. 


384 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘Oh, yes! came down this morning, with a letter from 
my mother.’’ 

' As our looks met, 1 observed that he was pale even to his 
lips, though he looked very steadily at me. I feared that 
some difference between him and his mother might have led 
to his being in the frame of mind in which I had found him 
at the solitary fireside. I hinted so. 

‘‘Oh, no!’ he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight 
laugh. ‘‘Nothing of thesort! Yes. He is come down, that 
man of mine.”’ 

“The same as ever?”’ said I. 

‘“The same as ever,’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘Distant and quiet 
as the North Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh 
named. She’s the Stormy Petrel now. What does Mr. 
Peggotty care for Stormy Petrels? 1’ll have her christened 
again,”’ 

‘*By what name?’’ | asked. 

‘The Little Em’ly.”’ 

As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as 
a reminder that he objected to being extolled for his consid- 
eration. I could not help showing in my face how much it 
pleased me; but 1 said little, and he resumed his usual smile, 
and seemed relieved. 

‘*But, see here,’’ he said, looking before us, ‘‘where the 
original little Em’ly comes! And that fellow with her, eh? 
Upon my soul, he’s a true knight. He never leaves her.’’ — 

Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved 
a natural ingenuity in that handicraft until he had become 
a skilled workman. He was in his working-dress, and 
looked rugged enough, but manly withal, and a very fit 
protector for the blooming little creature at his side. In- 
deed, there was a frankness in his faee, an honesty, and an 
undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her, 
which were, to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they 
came toward us, that they were well matched, even in that 
particular. 

She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped 


David @opperfield 385 


to speak to them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and 
tome. When they passed on, after we had exchanged a few 
words, she did not like to replace that hand; but, still appear- 
ing timid and constrained, walked by herself. I thought all 
this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth seemed to think 
so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light of 
a young moon. 

Suddenly there passed us—evidently following them—a 
young woman whose approach we had not observed, but 
whose face I ‘saw as she went by, and thought I had a faint 
remembrance of. She was lightly dressed, looked bold and 
haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, 
to have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and 
to have nothing in her mind but going after them. As the 
dark distant level, absorbing their figures into itself, left but 
itself visible between us and the sea and clouds, her figure 
disappeared in like manner, still no nearer to them than 
before. 

‘‘That is a black shadow to be following the girl,’’ said 
Steerforth, standing still; ‘‘what does it mean?”’ 

He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to 
me. 

**She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,’’ 
said [. 

‘*A beggar would be no novelty,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘but 
it is a strange thing that the beggar should take that shape 
to-night.’ 7 

‘“Why?’’ I asked him. 

‘‘Hor no better reason, truly, than because I was think- 
ing,’’ he said, after a pause, ‘‘of something like it, when it 
came by. Where the devil did it come from, I wonder!”’ 

“Brom the shadow of this wall, I think,” said I, as we 
emerged upon a road on which a wall abutted. 

‘It’s gone!’ he returned, looking over his shoulder. 
“And all ill go with it. Now for our dinner!’’ 

. But he looked again over his shoulder toward the sea- 
line glimmering afar off; and yet again. And he wondered 
Vou. II—(18) 


386 Works of Charles Dickens 


about it, in some broken expressions, several times, in the 
short remainder of our walk; and only seemed to forget it 
when the light of fire and candle shone upon us, seated warm 
and merry, at table. 

Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me. 
When I said to him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss 
Dartle were well, he answered, respectfully (and of course 
respectably), that they were tolerably well, he thanked me, 
and had sent their compliments. This was all, and yet he 
seemed to me to say as plainly as a man could say: ‘‘ You are 
very young, sir; you are exceedingly young.”’ 

We had almost finished dinner, when, taking a step or 
two toward the table, from the corner where he kept watch 
upon us, or rather upon me, as I felt, he said to his master: 

‘‘T beg your pardon, sir. Miss Mowcher is down here.’’ 

‘‘Who?’’ cried Steerforth, much astonished. 

‘*Miss Mowcher, sir.’’ 

‘‘Why, what on earth does she do here?’’ said Steerforth. 

‘Tt appears to be her native part of the country, sir. She 
informs me that she makes one of her professional visits here. 
every year, sir. I met her in the street this afternoon, and 
she wished to know if she might have the honor of waiting 
on you after dinner, sir.’’ 

‘*Do you know the Giantess in question, Daisy?’’ inquired 
Steerforth. 

I was obliged to confess—I felt ashamed, even of being at 
this disadvantage before Littimer—that Miss Mowcher and I 
were wholly unacquainted. 

‘*Then you shall know her,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘for she is 
one of the seven wonders of the world. When Miss Mowcher 
comes, show her in.”’ 

“I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, es- 
pecially as Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I 
referred to her, and positively refused to answer any ques- 
tions of which I made her the subject. I remained, there- 
fore, in a state of considerable expectation. until the cloth had | 
been removed some half an hour, and we were sitting over 


David Copperfield 387 


our decanter of wine before the fire, when the door opened 
and Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed, 
announced : 

*“Miss Mowcher!’’ 

1 looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still 
looking at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was 
a long while making her appearance, when, to my infinite 
astonishment, there came waddling round a sofa which stood 
between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty- 
five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish gray 
eyes, and such extremely little arms that, to enable herself 
to lay a finger archly against her snub-nose as she ogled 
Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger half-way, and 
lay her nose against it. Her chin, which was what is called 
a double-chin, was so fat that it entirely swallowed up the 
strings of her bonnet, bow and all. Throat she had none; 
waist she had none; legs she had none, worth mentioning; 
for though she was more than full-sized down to where her 
waist would have been, if she had had any, and though she 
terminated, as human beings generally do, in a pair of feet, 
she was so short that she stood at a common-sized chair as 
at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat. This lady 
—dressed in an off-hand, easy style--bringing her nose and 
her forefinger together, with the difficulty 1 have described, 
standing with her head necessarily on one side, and, with one 
of her sharp eyes shut up, making an uncommonity knowing 
face, after ogling Steerforth for a few moments, broke into 
a torrent of words. 

“What! My flower!’’ she pleasantly began, shaking her 
large head at him. ‘‘You’re there, are you! Oh, you 
naughty boy, fie for shame, what do you do so far away 
from home? Up to mischief, I’ll be bound. Oh, you’re 
a downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I’m another, 
ain’t I? Ha, ha, ha! You’d have betted a hundred pounds 
to five now, that you wouldn’t have seen me here, wouldn’t 
you? Bless you, man alive, I’m everywhere. I’m here, and 
there, and where not, like the conjurer’s half-crown in the 


388 Works of Charles Diekens 


lady’s handkercher. Talking of handkerchers—and talking 
of ladies—what a comfort you are to your blessed mother, 
ain’t you, my dear boy, over one of my shoulders, and I 
don’t say which!’ 

Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her 
discourse, threw back the strings, and sat down panting, on 
a footstool, in front of- the fire—making a kind of arbor of 
the dining-table, which spread its mahogany shelter above 
her head. 

‘‘Oh, my stars and what’s-their-names!’’ she went on, 
clapping a hand on each of her little knees, and glancing 
shrewdly at me. ‘I’m of too full a habit, that’s the fact, 
Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives me as much 
trouble to draw every breath I want as if it was a bucket 
of water. If you saw me looking out of an upper window, 
you’d think 1 was a fine woman, wouldn’t you?” 

‘‘T should think that, wherever I saw you,’’ replied Steer- 
forth. 

‘‘Go along, you dog, do!’’ cried the little creature, mak- 
ing a whisk at him with the handkerchief with which she 
was wiping her face, ‘‘and don’t be impudent! But I give 
you my word and honor I was at Lady Mithers’s last week 
—there’s a woman. How she wears!—and Mithers himself 
came into the room where I was waiting for her—there’s a 
man! How he wears! and his wig, too, for he’s had it these 
ten years—and he went on at that rate in the complimentary 
line, that I began to think I should be obliged to ring the 
bell. Ha! ha! ha! He’s a pleasant Wirth but he wants 
principle.”’ 

‘What were you doing for Lady Mithers?’’ asked Steer- 
forth. 

‘‘That’s tellings, my blessed infant,’’ she retorted, tapping 
her nose again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes 
like an imp of supernatural intelligence. ‘‘ Never you mind! 
You’d like to know whether I stop her hair from falling off, 
or dye it, or touch up her complexion, or improve her eye- 
brows, wouldn’t you? And so you shall, my darling—when 


David Gopperfield 389 


I tell you! Do you know what my great grandfather’s name 
was?”’ 

‘*No,’’ said Steerforth. 

‘‘It was Walker, my sweet pet,’’ replied Miss Mcwcher, 
‘tand he came of a long line of Walkers, that I inherit all 
the Hookey estates from.”’ 

I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher’s 
wink, except Miss Mowcher’s self-possession. She had a 
wonderful way, too, when listening to what was said to 
her, or when waiting for an answer to what she had said 
herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on one side, — 
and one eye turned up like a magpie’s. Altogether, I was 
lost in amazement, and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, 
I am afraid, of the laws of politeness. 

She had by this time drawn the chair to her side, and was 
busily engaged in producing from the bag (plunging in her 
short arm to the shoulder, at every dive) a number of small 
bottles, sponges, combs, brushes, bits of flannel, little pairs 
of curling irons, and other instruments, which she tumbled 
in a heap upon the chair. From this employment she 
suddenly desisted, and said to Steerforth, much to my 
confusicn: 

‘*Who’s your friend ?”’ 

‘“Mr. Copperfield,’’ said Steerforth; ‘‘he wants to know 
you.”’ 

‘‘Well, then, he shall! I thought he looked as if he did!’’ 
returned Miss Mowcher, waddling up to me, bag in hand, 
and laughing on me as she came. ‘‘Face like a peach!”’ 
standing on tiptoe to pinch my cheek as | sat. ‘‘Quite 
tempting! I’m very fond of peaches. Happy to make your 
acquaintance, Mr. Coppertield, I’m sure.”’ 

I said that I congratulated myself on having the honor to 
make hers, and that the happiness was mutual. 

‘‘Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!’’ exclaimed Miss 
Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large 
face with her morsel of a hand. ‘‘What a world of gammon 
and spinnage it is, though, ain’t it?” 


390 Works of Charles Dickens 


This was addressed confidentially to both of us, as the 
morsel of a hand came away from the face and buried itself, 
arm and ali, in the bag again. 

‘‘What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?”’ said Steerforth. 

‘‘Ha! ha! ha! What a refreshing set of humbugs we are, 
to be sure, ain’t we, my sweet child?’’ replied that morsel of 
a woman, feeling in the bag with her head on one side and 
her eye in the air. ‘‘Look here!’’ taking something out. — 
‘Scraps of the Russian prince’s nails! Prince Alphabet 
turned topsy-turvy, J call him, for his name’s got all the 
letters in it, higgledy-piggledy.”’ 

‘‘The Russian prince is a client of yours, is he?’’ said 
Steerforth. 

‘*T believe you, my pet,’’ replied Miss Mowcher. ‘‘I keep 
his nails in order for him. ‘Twice a week! Fingers and 
toes !”’ 

‘*He pays well, I hope?’’ said Steerforth. 

‘‘Pays as he speaks, my dear child—through the nose,”’ 
replied Miss Mowcher. ‘‘None of your close shavers the 
prince ain’t. You’d say so if you saw his mustachios. Red 
by nature, black by art.’’ 

‘‘By your art, of course?’’ said Steerforth. 

Miss Mowcher winked assent. ‘‘Forced to send for me. 
Couldn’t help it. The climate affected his dye; it did very 
well in Russia, but it was no go here. You never saw such 
a rusty prince in all your born days as he was. Like old 
iron !”’ | 

‘Ts that why you called him a humbug just now?’’ in- 
quired Steerforth. 

‘‘Oh, you’re a broth of a boy, ain’t you?’’ returned Miss 
Mowcher, shaking her head violently. ‘‘I said what a set 
of humbugs we were in general, and I showed you the scraps 
of the prince’s nails to prove it. The prince’s nails do more 
forme in private families of the genteel sort than all my 
talents put together. I always carry ’em about. They’re the 
best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the prince’s nails, 
she must be all right. I give ’em away to the young ladies. 


David Gopperfield : 391 


They put ’em in albums, I believe. Ha! ha! ha! Upon my 
life, ‘the whole social system’ (as the men call it when they 
make speeches in Parliament) is a system of prince’s nails!’’ 
said this least of women, trying to fold her short arms, and 
nodding her Jarge head. 

Steerforth laughed heartily, and I laughed, too. Miss 
Mowcher continuing all the time to shake her head (which 
was very much on one side), and to look into the air with 
one eye, and to wink with the other. 

‘‘Well, well!’’ she said, smiting her small knees, and 
rising, ‘‘this is not business. Come, Steerforth, let’s explore 
the polar regions, and have it over.”’ 

She then selected two or three of the little instruments, 
and a little bottle, and asked (to my surprise), if the table 
would bear. On Steerforth’s replying in the affirmative, she 
pushed a chair against it, and begging the assistance of my 
hand, mounted up, pretty nimbly, to the top, as if it were 
a stage. 

“Tf either of you saw my ankles,’’ she said, when she 
was safely elevated, ‘‘say so, and Pll go home and destroy 
myself.’’ 

**7 did not,’’ said Steerforth. 

Sa) did-not,’’ said I. 

**Well, then,’’ cried Miss Mowcher, ‘‘I’ll consent to live. 
Now, ducky, ducky, ducky, come to Mrs. Bond and be 
killed.”’ 

This was an invocation to Steerforth to place himself 
under her hands; who, accordingly, sat himself down, with 
his back to the table, and his laughing face toward me, and 
submitted his head to her inspection, evidently for no other 
purpose than our entertainment. 'T’osee Miss Mowcher stand- 
ing over him, looking at his rich profusion of brown hair 
through a large round magnifying-glass, which she took out 
of her pocket, was a most amazing spectacle. 

“You're a pretty fellow!’ said Miss Mowcher, after a 
brief inspection. ‘‘You’d be as bald as a friar on the top 
of your head in twelve months, but for me. Just half a 


> 


392 Works of Charles Dickens 


minute, my young friend, and we’ll give you a polishing 
that shall keep your curls on for the next ten years!’’ 

With this, she tilted some of the contents of the little bottle 
on to one of the little bits of flannel, and, again imparting 
some of the virtues of that preparation to one of the little 
brushes, began rubbing and scraping away with both on the 
crown of Steerforth’s head in the busiest manner I ever wit- 
nessed, talking-all the time. 

‘‘There’s Charley Pyegrave, the duke’s son,’ 
‘You know Charley?’’ peeping round into his face. 

‘* A little,’’? said Steerforth. 

‘“Whatamanheis! There's awhisker! As to Charley’s 
legs, if they were only a pair (which they ain’t) they’d defy 
competition. Would you believe he tried to do without me 
—in the Life-Guards, too?’’ 

‘*Mad!”’ said Steerforth. 

‘‘Tt looks like it. However, mad or gane, he tried,”’’ 
returned Miss Mowcher. ‘‘What does he do, but, lo! and 
behold you, he goes into a perfumer’s shop, and wants to 
buy a bottle of the Madagascar Liquid.’’ 

‘‘Charley does?’’ said Steerforth. 

‘‘Charley does. But they haven’t got any of the Mada- 
gascar Liquid.”’ 

‘“‘What is it? Something to drink?” asked Steer- 
forth. 

‘To drink!’ returned Miss Mowcher, stopping to slap 
his cheek. ‘‘To doctor his own mustachios with, you 
know. There was a woman in the shop—elderly female— 
quite a Griffin—who had never even heard of it by name. 
‘Begging pardon, sir,’ said the Griffin to Charley, ‘it’s not 
—not—not ROUGE, is it?’ ‘Rouge,’ said Charley to the 
Griffin. ‘What the unmentionable to ears polite, do you 
think I want with rouge?’ ‘No offense, sir,’ said the Griffin; 
‘we have it asked for by so many names, I thought it might 
be.” Now that, my child,’’ continued Miss Mowcher, rub- 
bing all the time as busily as ever, ‘‘is another instance of 
the refreshing humbug 1 was speaking of, J do something 


b) 


she said. 


David @opperfield 393 


in that way myself—perhaps a good deal—perhaps a little— 
sharp’s the word, my dear boy—never mind!”’ 

‘In what way do you mean? In the rouge way?’’ said 
Steerforth. 

‘Put this and that together, my tender pupil,’’ returned 
the wary Mowcher, touching her nose, ‘‘work it by the rule 
of Secrets in all trades, and the product will give you the 
desired result. I say J doa little in that way myself. One 
dowager, she calls it lip-salve. Another, she calls it gloves. 
Another, she calls it tucker-edging. Another, she calls ‘it a 
fan. J call it whatever they call it. I supply it for ’em, but 
we keep up the trick so, to one another, and make believe with 
such a face, that they’d as soon think of laying it on, before 
a whole drawing-room, as before me. And when I wait upon 
"em, they’ll say to me sometimes—with it on—thick, and no 
mistake—‘ How am I looking, Mowcher? Am I pale?’ Ha! 
ha! ha! ha! Isn’t that refreshing, my young friend!’’ 

I never did in my days behold anything like Mowcher as 
she stood upon the dining-table, intensely enjoying this re- 
freshment, rubbing busily at Steerforth’s head, and winking 
at me over it, 

‘‘Ah!”’ she said. ‘‘Such things are not much in demand 
hereabout. That sets me off again! I haven’t seen a pretty 
woman since I’ve been here, Jemmy.’’ 

**No?’’ said Steerforth. 

‘*Not the ghost of one,’’ replied Miss Mowcher. 

‘*We could show her the substance of one, I think,’’ said 
Steerforth, addressing his eyes to mine. ‘‘HKh, Daisy?’’ 

‘*Yes, indeed,’’ said I. / 

*‘Aha!’’ cried the little creature, glancing sharply at my 
face, and then peeping round at Steerforth’s. ‘‘Umph?’’ 

The first exclamation sounded like a question put to both 
of us, and the second like a question put to Steerforth only. 
She seemed to have found no answer to either, but continued 
to rub, with her head on one side and her eye turned up, as 
if she were looking for an answer in the air, and were confi- 
dent of its appearing presently, 


394 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘*A sister of yours, Mr. Copperfield?’’ she cried, after a 
pause, and still keeping the same lookout. ‘“‘Ay, ay?” 

‘*No,’’ said Steerforth, before I could reply. ‘‘ Nothing 
of the sort. On the contrary, Mr. Copperfield used—or I am 
much mistaken—to have a great admiration for her!” 

‘‘Why hasn’t he now?”’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘‘Is he | 
fickle? oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change 
every hour, until Polly his passion requited?—Is her name 
Polly ?”’ 

The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me 
with this question, and a searching look, quite disconcerted 
me for a moment. 

‘‘No, Miss Mowcher,’’ I replied. ‘‘Her name is Emily.” 

‘*Aha!’’ she cried exactly as before. ‘‘Umph? Whata 
rattle Tam! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t 1 volatile?” 

Her tone and look implied something that was not agree- 
able to me in connection with the subject. So I said, in a 
graver manner than any of us had yet assumed: 

‘‘She is as virtuous as she is pretty. She is engaged to 
be married to a most worthy and deserving man in her own 
station of life. I esteem her for her good sense, as much as 
I admire her for her good looks.’’ 

‘*Well said!’’ cried Steerforth. ‘‘Here, here, here! Now 
111 quench the curiosity of this little Fatima, my dear Daisy, 
by leaving her nothing to guess at. She is at present appren- 
ticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled, or whatever it may be, to 
Omer & Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and so forth, in 
this town. Do you observe? Omer & Joram. The promise 
of which my friend has spoken, is made and entered into 
with her cousin; Christian name, Ham; surname, Peggotty ; 
occupation, boat-builder; also of this town. She lives with © 
a relative; Christian name, unknown; surname, Peggotty; 
occupation, seafaring; also of this town. She is the prettiest 
and most engaging little fairy in the world. I admire her— 
as my friend does—exceedingly. If it were not that I might 
appear to disparage her Intended, which I know my friend 
would not like, I would add, that to me she seems to be 


David Copperfield 395 


throwing herself away; that I am sure she might do better; 
and that I swear she was born to be a lady.”’ 

Miss Mowcher listened to these words, which were very 
slowly and distinctly spoken, with her head on one side, and 
her eye in the air, as if she were still looking for that answer. 
When he ceased she became brisk again in an instant, and 
rattled away with surprising volubility. 

‘Oh! And that’s all about it, is it?’’ she exclaimed, 
trimming his whiskers with a little restless pair of scissors, 
that went glancing round his head in all directions. ‘‘ Very 
well, very well! Quite a long story. Ought to end ‘and 
they lived happy ever afterward,’ oughtn’t it? Ah! What’s 
that game at forfeits? I love my love with an EH, because 
she’s enticing; I hate her with an EK, because she’s engaged. 
I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with 
an elopement, her name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? 
Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’’ 

Merely looking at me with extravagant slyness, and not 
waiting for any reply, she continued, without drawing 
breath : 

‘‘There! If ever any scapegrace was trimmed and touched 
up to perfection, you are, Steerforth. If I understand any 
noddle in the world, I understand yours. Do you hear me 
when I tell you that, my darling? I understand yours,’’ 
peeping down into his face. ‘‘Now you may mizzle, Jemmy 
(as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield will take the 
chair I’]l operate on him.’’ 

‘What do you say, Daisy?’’ inquired Steerforth, laughing, 
and resigning his seat. ‘‘ Will you be improved ?”’ 

‘*Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.’’ 

“‘Don’t say no,’’ returned the little woman, looking at 
me with the aspect of a connoisseur; ‘‘a little bit more eye- 
brow ?”’ 

‘“‘Thank you,’’ I returned, ‘‘some other time.”’ 

‘“‘Have it carried half a quarter of an inch toward the 
temple,’’ said Miss Mowcher. ‘‘We can do it in a fort- 
night.’ 


396 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘No, I thank you. Not at present.’’ 

‘‘Go in for a tip,’? she urged. ‘‘No? Let’s get the scaf- 
folding up, then, for a pair of whiskers. Come!’’ 

I could not help blushing as I declined, for I felt we were 
on my weak point now. But Miss Mowcher, finding that I 
was not at-present disposed for any decoration within the 
range of her art, and that I was, for the time being, proof 
against the blandishments of the small bottle which she held 
up betore one eye to enforce her persuasions, said we would 
make a beginning on an early day, and requested the aid of 
my hand to descend from her elevated station. Thus assisted, 
she skipped down with much agility, and began to tie her 
double chin into her bonnet. 

‘*The fee,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘is—’’ 

‘*Five bob,’’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘‘and dirt cheap, my 
chicken. Ain’t I volatile, Mr. Copperfield ?”’ 

1 replied politely: ‘‘Not at all.’ But I thought she was 
rather so, when she tossed up his two half-crowns like a 
goblin pieman, caught them, dropped them in her pocket, 
and gave it a loud slap. 

‘‘That’s the Till!’ observed Miss Mowcher, standing at 
the chair again, and replacing in the bag a miscellaneous 
collection of little objects she had emptied out of it. ‘‘Have 
I got all my traps? It seems so. It won’t do to be like long 
Ned Beadwood, when they took him to church ‘to marry him 
to somebody,’ as he says, and left the bride behind. Ha! ha! 
ha! A wicked rascal, Ned, but droll! Now, I know I’m 
going to break your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. 
You must call up all your fortitude, and try to bear it. Good- 
by, Mr. Copperfield! Take care of yourself, Jockey of Nor- 
folk! How I have been rattling on! It’s all the fault of you 
_twowretches. J forgiveyou! ‘Bobswore!’—as the English- 
man said for ‘Good-night,’ when he first learned French, and 
thought it so like English. ‘Bob swore,’ my ducks.’’ - 

With the bag slung over her arm, and rattling as she 
waddled away, she waddled to the door, where she stopped 
to inquire if she should leave us a lock of her hair. ‘*Ain’t 


David Sopperfield 397 


I volatile?’’ she added, as a commentary on this offer, and, 
with her finger on her nose, departed. 

Steerforth laughed to that degree that it was impossible 
for me to help laughing, too; though I am not sure I should 
have done so, but for this inducement. When we had had 
our laugh quite out, which was after some time, he told me 
that Miss Mowcher had quite an extensive connection, and 
made herself useful to a variety of people in a variety of 
ways. Some people trifled with her as a mere oddity, he 
said; but she was as shrewdly and sharply observant as any 
one he knew, and as long-headed as she was short-armed. 
He told me that what she had said of being here, and there, 
and everywhere, was true enough; for she made little darts 
into the provinces, and seemed to pick up customers every- 
where, and to know everybody. I asked him what her 
disposition was: whether it was at all mischievous, and if 
her sympathies were generally on the right side of things; 
but, not succeeding in attracting his attention to these ques- 
tions after two or three attempts, I forbore or forgot to repeat 
them. He told me instead, with much rapidity, a good deal 
about her skill, and her profits, and about her being a scien- 
tific cupper, if I should ever have occasion for her services in 
that capacity. 

She was the principal theme of our conversation during 
the evening; and when we parted for the night Steerforth 
called after me over the banisters: ‘‘Bob swore!’’ as I went 
downstairs. 

I was surprised, when I came to Mr. Barkis’s house, to 
find Ham walking up and down in front of it, and still more 
surprised to learn from him that little Em’ly was inside. I 
naturally inquired why he was not there, too, instead of 
pacing the streets by himself? 

‘‘Why, you see, Mas’r Davy,’’ he rejoined, in a hesitat- 
ing manner, ‘‘Km’ly, she’s talking to some ’un in here.”’ 

‘*T should have thought,’’ said I, smiling, ‘‘that that was 

» a reason for your being in here too, Ham.’’ 
‘Well, Mas’r Davy, in a general way, so ’twould be,”’ 


398 Works of Charles Diekens 


he returned; ‘‘but look’ee here, Mas’r Davy,’ lowering his 
voice, and speaking very gravely. ‘‘It’s a young woman, 
sir—a young woman that Em’ly know’d once, and doen’t 
ought to know no more.’’ 

When | heard these words, a light began to fall upon the 
figure I had seen following them, some hours ago. 

‘‘It’s a poor wurem, Mas’r Davy,”’ said Ham, ‘‘as is trod 
under foot by all the town. Upstreet and down street. The 
mowld o’ the churchyard don’t hold any that the folks shrink 
away from, more.’’ 

‘Did I see her to-night, Ham, on the sands, after we met 
you?”’ 

‘*Keeping us in sight?’’ said Ham. ‘‘It’s like you did, 
Mas’r Davy. Not that I know’d then, she was theer, sir, 
but along of her creeping soon arterwards under him’|ly’s little 
winder, when she see the ight come, and whisp’ring ‘Emly, 
Emly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart toward me. 
I was once like you!’ Those were solemn words, Mas’r Davy, 
fur to hear!’’ 

‘‘They were indeed, Ham. What did Em’ly do?”’ 

‘‘Says Em/’ly, ‘Martha, is it you? Oh, Martha, can it be 
you!’—for they had sat at work together, many a day, at Mr. 
Omer’s.”’ | 

‘‘T recollect her now!’’ cried I, recalling one of the two 
girls I had seen when I first went there. ‘‘Il recollect her 
quite well!’’ 

‘‘Martha Endell,’’ said Ham. ‘‘Two or three year older 
than Em/’ly, but was at the school with her.’’ 

‘‘Y never heard her name,’’ said I. ‘‘I didn’t mean to 
interrupt you.”’ 

‘‘Yor the matter o’ that, Mas’r Davy,”’ replied Ham, 
‘fall’s told a’most in them words, ‘Em/’ly, Em/’ly, for Christ’s 
sake, have a woman’s heart toward me. I was once like 
you.’ She wanted to speak to Em’ly. Emly couldn’t speak 
to her theer, for her loving uncle was come home, and he 
wouldn’t—no, Mas’r Davy,’’ said Ham, with great earnest- 
ness, ‘She couldn’t, kind-natur’d, tender-hearted as he is, 


David @opperfield 399 


see them two together, side by side, for all the treasures 
that’s wrecked in the sea.”’ 

I felt how true this was. I knew it, on the instant, quite 
as well as Ham. 

“So Em/’ly writes in pencil on a bit of paper,’’ he pur- 
sued, “‘and gives it to her out 0’ window to bring here. 
‘Show that,’ she says, ‘to my aunt, Mrs. Barkis, and she’ll 
set you down by her fire, for the love of me, till uncle is gone 
out, and I can come.’ By-and-by she tells me what I tell 
you, Mas’r Davy, and asks me to bring her. What can I 
do? She doen’t ought to know any such, but I can’t deny 
her when the tears is on her face.”’ 

He put his hand into the breast of his shaggy jacket, and 
took out with great care a pretty little purse. 

**And if [ could deny her when the tears was on her face, 
Mas’r Davy,’’ said Ham, tenderly adjusting it on the rough 
palm of his hand, ‘‘how could I deny her when she give me 
this to carry for her—knowing what she brought it for? 
Such a toy as it is!’’ said Ham, thoughtfully looking on it. 
*‘With such a little money in it, Em’ly my dear.”’ 

I shook him warmly by the hand when he had put it 
away again—for that was more satisfactory to me than say- 
ing anything—and we walked up and down for a minute or 
two in silence. The door opened then, and Peggotty ap- 
peared, beckoning to Ham to come in. I would have kept 
away, but she came after me, entreating me to come in, too. 
Even then, 1 would have avoided the room where they all 
were, but for its being the neat-tiled kitchen I have men- 
tioned more than once. The door opening iminediately into 
it, I found myself among them before I considered whither I 
was going. 

The girl—the same I had seen upon the sands—was near 
the fire. She was sitting on the ground, with her head and 
one arm lying on a chair. I fancied, from the disposition 
of her figure, that Km’ly had but newly risen from the chair, 
and that the forlorn head might perhaps have been lying on 
her lap. I.saw but little of the girl’s face, over which her 


400 Works of Charles Dickens 


hair fell loose and scattered, as if she had been disordering 
it with her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and 
of a fair complexion. Peggotty had been crying. So had 
little Em’ly. Not a word was spoken when we first went 
in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the silence, 
to tick twice as loud as usual. 

Em’ly spoke first. 

‘‘Martha wants,’’ she said to Ham, ‘‘to go to London.’’ 

‘‘Why to London?” returned Ham. 

He stood between them, looking on the prostrate girl with 
a mixture of compassion for her, and of jealousy of her hold- 
ing any companionship with her whom he loved so well, 
which I have always remembered distinctly. They both 
spoke as if she were ill; in a soft, suppressed tone, that was 
plainly heard, although it hardly rose above a whisper. 

‘‘Better there than here,”’ said a third voice, aloud— 
Martha’s, though she did not move. ‘‘No one knows me 
there. Hverybody knows me here.”’ 

‘*What will she do there?’’ inquired Ham. 

She lifted up her head, and looked darkly round at him 
for a moment; then laid it down again, and curved her right 
arm about her neck, as a woman in a fever, or in an agony 
of pain from a shot, might twist herself. 

‘‘She will try to do well,’’ said little Em’ly. ‘*You 
don’t know what she has said to us. Does he—do they— 
aunt?”’ 

Peggotty shook her head, compassionately. 

“‘T7ll try,’’? said Martha, ‘‘if you’ll help me away. I 
never can do worse than I have done here. I may do bet- 
ter. Oh!’ with a dreadful shiver, ‘‘take me out of these 
streets, where the whole town knows me from a child.”’ 

As Em’ly held out her hand to Ham, I saw him put in it 
a little canvas bag. She took it, as if she thought it were 
her purse, and made a step or two forward; but finding her 
mistake, came back to where he had retired near me, and 
showed it to him. 

“It’s all yourn, Em/’ly,’’ I could hear him say. ‘‘I haven’t 


David @opperfield 401 


nowt in all the wureld that ain’t yourn, my dear. It ain’t of 
no delight to me, except for you.’’ 

The tears rose freshly in her eyes, but she turned away 
and went to Martha. What she gave her I don’t know. I 
saw her stooping over her, and putting money in her bosom. 
She whispered something, and asked was that enough? 
‘*More than enough,’’ the other said, and took her hand and 
kissed it. 3 

Then Martha arose, and gathering her shawl about her, 
covering her face with it, and weeping aloud, went slowly to 
the door. She stopped a moment before going out, as if she 
would have uttered something or turned back; but no word 
passed her lips. Making the same low, dreary, wretched 
moaning in her shawl, she went away. 

As the door closed, little Em’ly looked at us three ina 
hurried manner, and then hid her face in her hands and fell 
to sobbing. 

‘*Doen’t, Em’ly!’ said Ham, tapping her gently on the 
shoulder. ‘‘Doen’t, my dear! You doen’t ought to cry so, 
pretty!’ 

‘“‘Oh, Ham!’’ she exclaimed, still weeping pitifully, ‘‘I 
am not as good a girl as I ought to be. I know | have not 
the thankful heart sometimes I ought to have.”’ 

‘*Yes, yes, you have, I’m sure,’’ said Ham. 

*‘No, no, no!”’ cried little Em’ly, sobbing and shaking | 
her head. ‘‘I am not as good a girl as 1 ought to be. Not 
near, not near!’’ 

And still she cried as if her heart would break. 

“‘T try your love too much. I know I do,”’ she sobbed. 
‘‘T’m often cross to you, and changeable with you, when I 
ought to be far different. You are never sotome. Why 
am I ever so to you, when I should think of nothing but how 
to be grateful, and to make you happy.”’ 

“You always make me so,’”’ said Ham, ‘‘my dear! I am 
happy in the sight of you. 1am happy, all day long, in the 
thoughts of you.”’ 

“Ah! that’s not enough,’’ she cried. ‘‘That is because 


402 Works of @harles Dickens 


you are good; not because I am. Oh, my dear, it might 
have been a better fortune for you, if you had been fond of 
some one else—of some one steadier and much worthier than 
me, who was all bound up in you, and never vain and 
changeable like me.’’ 

‘*Poor little tender-heart,’’ said Ham, in a low voice. 
‘*Martha has overset her altogether.’’ 

‘‘Please, aunt,’’ sobbed Emly, ‘‘come here, and let me 
lay my head upon you. Oh, I am very miserable to-night, 
aunt! Oh, Iam not as good a girl as 1 ought to be. Iam 
not, I know!”’ 

Peggotty had hastened to the chair before the fire. 
EKm/’ly, with her arms around her, kneeled by her, looking 
up most earnestly into her face. 

‘‘Oh, pray, aunt, try to help me! Ham, dear, try to help 
me! Mr. David, for the sake of old times, do, please, try to 
help me! I want to be a better girl thanI am. I want to 
feel a hundred times more thankful than I do. I want to 
feel more what a blessed thing it is to be the wife of a good 
man, and to lead a peaceful life. Oh, me! oh, me! Oh, my 
heart, my heart!’’ 

She dropped her face on my old nurse’s breast, and ceas- 
ing this supplication, which in its agony and grief was half 
a woman’s, half a child’s, as all her manner was (being, in 
that, more natural, and better suited to her beauty, as I 
thought, than any other manner could have been), wept 
silently, while my old nurse hushed her like an infant. 

She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her; 
now talking encouragingly, and now jesting a little with 
her, until she began to raise her head and speak to us. So 
we got on, until she was able to smile, and then to laugh, 
and then to sit up, half-ashamed; while Peggotty recalled 
her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and made her neat again, 
lest her uncle should wonder, when she got home, why his 
darling had been crying. — 

I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do 
before. I saw her innocently kiss her chosen husband on 


David Gopperfield 403 


the cheek, and creep close to his bluff form as if it were her 
best support. When they went away together, in the wan- 
ing moonlight, and I looked after them, comparing their de- 
parture in my mind with Martha’s, I saw that she held his 
arm with both her hands, and still kept close to him. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 
I CORROBORATE MR. DICK, AND CHOOSE A PROFESSION 


WHEN I awoke in the morning I thought very much of 
little Em’ly, and her emotion last night after Martha had 
left. I felt as if I had come into the knowledge of those 
domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred confidence, 
and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be 
wrong. Il had no gentler feeling toward any one than to- 
ward the pretty creature who had been my playmate, and 
whom I have always been persuaded, and shall always be 
persuaded, to my dying day, I then devotedly loved. The 
repetition to any ears—even to Steerforth’s—of what she had 
been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an 
accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, 
unworthy of the light of our pure childhood, which I always 
saw encircling her head. I made a resolution, therefore, to 
keep it in my own breast; and there it gave her image a new 
erace, 

While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me 
from my aunt. As it contained matter on which I thought 
Steerforth could advise me as well as any one, and on which 
I knew I should be delighted to consult him, I resolved to 
make it a subject of discussion on our journey home. For 
the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our 
friends. Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among 
them, in his regret at our departure; and I believe would 
even have opened the box again, and sacrificed another 


404 Works of Charles Dickens 


guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty hours in 
Yarmouth. Peggotty, and all her family, were full of grief 
at our going. The whole house of Omer & Joram turned 
out to bid us good-by; and there were so many seafaring 
volunteers in attendance on Steerforth, when our portman- 
teaus went.to the coach, that if we had had the baggage of a 
regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to 
carry it. Ina word, we departed to the regret and admira- 
tion of all concerned, and left a great many people very sorry 
behind us. 

‘‘Do you stay long here, Littimer?’’ said I, as he stood - 
waiting to see the coach start. 

‘‘No, sir,’’ he replied; ‘‘probably not very long, sir.’’ 

‘“‘He can hardly say just now,’’ observed Steerforth, 
carelessly. ‘‘He knows what he has to do, and he’ll do it.”’ 

‘‘That 1 am sure he will,’’ said I. 

Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgment of my good 
opinion, and I felt about eight years old. He touched it 
once more, wishing us a good journey; and we left him 
standing on the pavement, as respectable a mystery as any 
pyramid in Egypt. 

For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth 
being unusually silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in 
wondering within myself when | should see the old places 
again, and what new changes might happen to me or them 
in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming gay and 
talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked 
at any moment, pulled me by the arm: : 

‘‘Find a voice, David. What about the letter you were 
speaking of at breakfast?’’ 

‘Oh!’ said I, taking it out of my pocket. ‘‘It’s from 
my aunt.’’ : 

‘*And what does she say, requiring consideration?’ 

‘*Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,’’ said I, ‘‘that I came 
out on this expedition to look about me and to think a 
little.’ 

‘Which, of course, you have done?”’ 


David Ropperfield 405 


‘‘Indeed I can’t say 1 have, particularly. To tell you the 
truth, [ am afraid I had forgotten it.”’ 

‘“Well! look about you now, and make up for your 
negligence,’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘Look to the right, and 
you'll see a flat country, with a good deal of marsh in 
it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same. Look to the 
front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear, and 
there it is still.’’ 

I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession 
in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to 
its flatness. 

‘‘What says our aunt on the subject?’’ inquired Steer- 
forth, glancing at the letter in my hand. ‘‘ Does she suggest 
anything ?”’ 

‘‘Why, yes,’’ said I. ‘‘She asks me here, if I think I 
should like to be a proctor? What do you think of it?”’ 

‘‘Well, I don’t know,’’ replied Steerforth, coolly. ‘‘You 
may as well do that as anything else, I suppose?”’ 

I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all call- 
ings and professions so equally; and I told him so. 

‘*What zs a proctor, Steerforth?’’ said I. 

‘‘Why, he isa sort of monkish attorney,’’ replied Steer- 
forth. ‘‘He is, to some faded courts held in Doctors’ Com- 
mons—a lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard—what 
solicitors are to the courts of law and equity. He is a func- 
tionary whose existence, in the natural course of things, 
would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can 
tell you best what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Com- 
mons is. It’s a little out-of-the-way place, where they ad- 
minister what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds 
of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, 
which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and 
the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil 
state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an 
ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s 
marriages, and disputes among ships and boats.”’ 

_ **Nonsense, Steerforth,’’ I exclaimed. ‘‘ You don’t mean 


406 Works of Charles Diekens 


to say that there is an affinity between nautical matters and 
ecclesiastical matters?”’ | 

‘*T don’t, indeed, my dear boy,’’ he returned; ‘‘but 1 
mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same 
set of people, down in that same Doctors’ Commons. You 
shall go there one day, and find them blundering through 
half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary, apropos of 
the Nancy having run down the Sarah Jane, or Mr. Peg- 
gotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of 
wind with an anchor and cable to the Nelson Indiaman in 
distress; and you shall go there another day, and find them 
deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman 
who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge 
in the nautical case the advocate in the clergyman’s case, or 
contrariwise. They are like actors—now a man’s a judge, 
and now he is not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s 
another; now he’s something else, change and change about; 
but it’s always a very pleasant profitable little affair of pri- 
vate theatricals, presented to an uncommonly select audi- 
ence.”’ 

‘*But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?”’ 
said I, a little puzzled. ‘‘Are they?’’ 

‘‘No,”’ returned Steerforth, ‘‘the advocates are civilians — 
—men who have taken a doctor’s degree at college—which 
is the first reason of my knowing anything about it. The 
proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable 
fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little party. 
On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ 
Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their 
gentility there, I can tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.”’ 

I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating 
the subject, and considering it with reference to the staid air 
of gravity and antiquity which 1 associated with that ‘‘lazy 
old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard,’’ did not feel indis- 
posed toward my aunt’s suggestion; which she left to my 
free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it had 
occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in 


David Copperfield AO7 


Doctors’ Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my 
favor. 

‘*That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at 
all events,’’ said Steerforth, when I mentioned it—‘‘and one 
deserving of all encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that 
you take kindly to Doctors’ Commons.”’ | 

I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steer- 
forth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found 
from her letter), and that she had taken lodgings for a week 
at a kind of private hotel in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where 
there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the 
roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in 
London was going to be burned down every night. 

We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes 
recurring to Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant 
days when | should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pict- 
ured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that 
made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s end, 
he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; 
and I drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where | found my aunt 
up, and waiting supper. 

If IT had been round the world since we parted, we could 
hardly have been better pleased to meet again. My aunt 
cried outright as she embraced me; and said, pretending to 
laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive, that silly lit- 
tle creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt. 

**So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?’’ said I. ‘‘l 
am sorry for that. Ah! Janet, how do you do?”’ 

As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my 
aunt’s visage lengthen very much. 

**T am sorry for it, too,’’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose. 
‘*T have had no peace of mind, Trot, since l have been here.’’ 

Before I could ask why she told’me. 

‘‘T am convinced,’’ said my aunt, laying her hand with 
melancholy firmness on the table, ‘‘that Dick’s character is 
not a character to keep the donkeys off. I am confident he 
wants strength of purpose. I ought to have left Janet at 


408 Works of Charles Diekens 


home instead, and then my mind might perhaps have been 
at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my 
green,’’ said my aunt, with emphasis, ‘‘there was one this 
afternoon at four o’clock. A cold feeling came over me 
from head to foot, and I know it was a donkey.”’ 

I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected con- 
solation. | 

‘‘Tt was a donkey,’’ said my aunt; ‘‘and it was the one 
with the stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a wom- 
an rode, when she came to my house.’’ This had been, ever 
since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. 
‘If there is any Donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is 
harder to me to bear than another’s, that,’’ said my aunt, 
striking the table, ‘‘is the animal.’’ f 

Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturb- 
ing herself unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey 
in question was then engaged in the sand and gravel line of 
business, and was not available for purposes of trespass. 
But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it. | 

Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s 
rooms were very high up—whether that she might have 
more stone stairs for her money, or might be nearer to the 
door in the roof, I don’t know—and consisted of a roast 
fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did 
ample justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt 
had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate but 
little. 

‘‘] suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought 
up in a cellar,’’ said my aunt, ‘‘and never took the air except 
on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, 
but I don’t believe it... Nothing’s genuine in the place, in 
my opinion, but the dirt.’’ 

‘Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the 
country, aunt?’’ I hinted. 

‘‘Certainly not,’ returned my aunt. ‘“‘It would be no 
pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was 
what he pretended it was.’’ 


David Copperfield 409 


I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a 
good supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. 
When the table was cleared, Janet assisted her to arrange 
her hair, to put on her nightcap, which was of a smarter 
construction than usual (‘‘in case of fire,’? my aunt said), 
and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her 
usual preparations for warming herself before going to bed. 
I then made her, according to certain established regulations 
from which no deviation, however slight, could ever be per- 
mitted, a glass of hot white wine and water, and a slice of 
toast cut into long, thin strips. With these accompaniments 
we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting op- 
posite to me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips 
of toast in it, one by one, before eating them; and looking 
benignantly on me, from among the borders of her night- 
cap. 
‘‘Well, Trot,’’ she began, ‘‘what do you think of the 
proctor plan? Or have you not begun to think about it 
yet?”’ 

**T have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and 
I have talked a good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it 
very much, indeed. I like it exceedingly.’’ 

“‘Come!’”’ said my aunt. ‘‘That’s cheering!’ 

‘*T have only one difficulty, aunt.’’ 

“Say what it is, Trot,’’ she returned. 

‘“Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what 
1 understand, to be a limited profession, whether my en- 
trance into it would not be very expensive?”’ 

“Tt will cost,’’ returned my aunt, ‘“‘to article you, just a 
thousand pounds.”’ 

‘*‘Now, my dear aunt,’’ said I, drawing my chair nearer, 
‘‘T am uneasy in my mind about that. It’s a large sum of 
money. You have expended a great deal on my education, 
and have always been as liberal to me in all things as it was 
possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity. Sure- 
ly there are some ways in which | might begin life with 
hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of get- 


410 Works of Charles Dickens 


ting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it 
would not be better to try that course? Are you certain 
that you can afford to part with so much money? and that it 
is right that it should be so expended? TI only ask you, my 
second mother, to consider. Are you certain?”’ 

My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she 
was then engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; 
and then setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding 
her hands upon her folded skirts, replied as follows: 

‘Trot, my child, if 1 have any object in life, 1t is to pro- 
vide for your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I 
am bent upon it—so is Dick. I should hike some people that 
I know to hear Dick’s conversation on the subject. Its 
sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the resources of 
that man’s intellect except myself.”’ é 

She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, 
and went on. 

‘‘Tt’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works 
some influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have 
been better friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might 
have been better friends with that poor child your mother, 
even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed me. 
When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and 
way-worn, perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, 
Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a pride and a 
pleasure. Ihave no other claim upon my means; at least’’ 
—here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused—‘“‘no, 
I have no other claim upon my means—and you are my 
adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age, and 
bear with my whims and fancies; and you will do more for 
an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy or con- 
ciliating as it might have been, than ever that old woman 
did for you.”’ 

lt was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her 
past history. There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of 
doing so, and of dismissing it, which would have exalted her 
in my respect and affection, if anything could. 


David @opperfield 411 


‘‘All is agreed and understood between us now, Trot,”’ 
said my aunt, ‘‘and we need talk of this no more. Give 
me a kiss, and we'll go to the Commons after breakfast 
to-morrow.”’ 

We had a Jong chat by the fire before we went to bed. I 
slept in a room on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a 
little disturbed in the course of the night by her knocking at 
my door as often as she was agitated by a distant sound of 
hackney-coaches or market-carts, and inquiring ‘‘if I heard 
the engines?’’ But toward morning she slept better, and 
suffered me to do so, too. 

At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs. 
Spenlow & Jorkins, in Doctors’ Commons. My aunt, who 
had this other general opinion in reference to London, that 
every man she saw was a pickpocket, gave me her purse 
to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some 
silver. 

We made a pause at the toy-shop in Fleet Street, to see 
the giants of Saint Dunstan’s strike upon the bells—we had 
timed our going, so as to catch them at it, at twelve o’clock 
—and then went on toward Ludgate Hill and St. Paul’s 
Churchyard. We were crossing to the former place when I 
found that my aunt greatly accelerated her speed, and looked 
frightened. I observed, at the same time, that a lowering, 
ill-dressed man who had stopped and stared at us in pass- 
ing, a little before, was coming so close after us as to brush, 
against her. 

“Trot! My dear Trot!’ cried my aunt, in a terrified 


whisper, and pressing my arm. ‘‘I don’t know what I am 
to do.”’ 
“‘Don’t be alarmed,’’ said I. ‘‘There’s nothing to be 


afraid of. Step into a shop, and I’ll soon get rid of this 
fellow.’’ | 

‘‘No, no, child!’’ she returned. ‘‘Don’t speak to him for 
the world. I entreat, I order you.”’ 

‘“‘Good heaven, aunt!’’ said I. ‘‘He is nothing but a 
sturdy beggar.”’ 


412 Works of @harles Dickens 


‘“You don’t know what he is!’’ replied my aunt. ‘You 
don’t know who he is. You don’t know what you say.”’ 

We had stopped in an empty doorway while this was 
passing, and he had stopped, too. 

‘‘Don’t look at him,’’ said my aunt, as I turned my head 
indignantly; ‘‘but get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me 
in St. Paul’s Churchyard.”’ 

‘‘Wait for you?’’ I repeated. 





‘““Yes,’’ rejoined my aunt, ‘‘1 must go alone. I must go 
with him.’’ 

‘With him, aunt? This man?”’ 

‘‘T am in my senses,”’ she replied, ‘‘and I tell you I must. 
Get me a coach.”’ 

However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that 
IT had no right to refuse compliance with such a peremptory 
command. I hurried away a few paces, and called a hack- 
ney-chariot which was passing empty. Almost before I 
could let down the steps, my aunt sprang in, I don’t know 


' Dauid Gopperfield 413 


how, and the man followed. She waved her hand to me to 
go away, so earnestly, that, all confounded as I was, I 
turned from them at once. In doing so, [ heard her say to 
the coachman: ‘‘Drive anywhere! Drive straight on!’’ and 
presently the chariot passed me, going up the hill. 

What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to 
be a delusion of his, now came into my mind. I could not 
doubt that this person was the person of whom he had made 
such mysterious mention, though what the nature of his hold 
upon my aunt could possibly be, I was quite unable to im- 
agine, After half an hour’s cooling in the churchyard, I 
saw the chariot coming back. The driver stopped beside 
me, and my aunt was sitting in it alone. 

She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation 
to be quite prepared for the visit we had to make. She de- 
sired me to get into the chariot, and to tell the coachman to 
drive slowly up and down a little while. She said no more, 
except: “‘My dear child, never ask me what it was, and 
don’t refer to it,’’ until she had perfectly regained her com- 
posure, when she told me she was quite herself now and we 
might get out. On her giving me her purse, to pay the 
driver, I found that all the guineas were gone, and only the 
loose silver remained. 

Doctors’ Commons was approached by a little low arch- 
way. Before we had taken many paces down the street be- 
yond it, the noise of the city seemed to melt, as if by magic, 
into a softened distance. A few dull courts, and narrow 
ways, brought us to the skylighted offices of Spenlow & Jor- 
kins; in the vestibule of which temple, accessible to pilgrims 
without the ceremony of knocking, three or four clerks were 
at work as copyists. One of these, a little dry man, sitting 
by himself, who wore a stiff brown wig that looked as if it 
were made of gingerbread, rose to receive my aunt, and 
show us into Mr. Spenlow’s room. 

‘‘Mr. Spenlow’s in court, ma’am,”’ said the dry man; 
‘it?s an Arches day; but it’s close by, and I[’ll send for him 
directly.”’ 


414 Works of Charles Dickens 


As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was. 
fetched, I availed myself of the opportunity. The furniture 
of the room was old-fashioned and dusty; and the green 
baize on the top of the writing-table had lost all its color, 
and was as withered and pale as an old pauper. There were 
a great many bundles of papers on it, some indorsed as Alle- 
gations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels, and some as be- 
ing in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches Court, 
and some in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Ad- 
miralty Court, and some in the Delegate’s Court; giving me 
occasion to wunder much how many Courts there might be 
in the gross, and how long it would take to understand them 
all. Besides these, there were sundry immense manuscript 
Books of Evidence taken on affidavit, strongly bound, and 
tied together in massive sets, a set to each cause, as if every 
cause were a history in ten or twenty volumes. All this 
looked tolerably expensive, I thought, and gave me an agree- 
able notion of a proctor’s business. J was casting my eyes 
with increasing complacency over these and many similar 
objects, when hasty footsteps were heard in the room out- 
side, and Mr. Spenlow, in a black gown trimmed with white 
fur, came hurrying in, taking off his hat as he came. 

He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable 
boots, and the stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars. 
He was buttoned up mighty trim and tight, and must have 
taken a great deal of pains with his whiskers, which were 
accurately curled. His gold watch-chain was so massive that 
a fancy came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy 
golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which are put up 
over the goldbeater’s shops. He was got up with such care, 
and was so stiff, that he could hardly bend himself; being 
obliged, when he glanced at some papers on his desk, after 
sitting down in his chair, to move his whole body, from the 
bottom of his spine, like Punch. 

I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had 
been courteously received. He now said: 

‘‘And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our 


David @opperfield 415 


profession? .I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I 
had the pleasure of an interview with her the other day’’— 
with another inclination of his body—Punch again—‘‘that 
there was a vacancy here. Miss Trotwood was good enough 
to mention that she had a nephew who was her peculiar care, 
and for whom she was seeking to provide genteelly in life. 
That nephew, I believe, I have now the pleasure of’’—Punch 
again. 

I bowed my acknowledgments, and said my aunt had 
mentioned t» me that there was that opening, and that I be- 
lieved I should like it very much. That I was strongly in- 
clined to like it, and had taken immediately to the proposal. 
That I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it, until I 
knew something more about it. That although it was little 
else than a matter of form, I presumed I should have an op- 
portunity of trying how I liked it before I bound myself to it 
irrevocably. 

‘*Oh, surely, surely!’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘‘ We always, 
in this house, propose a month—an initiatory month. T 
should be happy myself to propose two months—three—an 
indefinite period, in fact—but I have a partner. Mr. Jor- 
kins.”’ 

‘And the premium, sir,’’ I returned, ‘‘is a thousand 
pounds.”’ 

‘‘And the premium, stamp included, is a thousand 
pounds,’’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘‘As I have mentioned to Miss 
Trotwood, I am actuated by no mercenary considerations; 
few men are less so, I believe; but Mr. Jorkins has his opin- 
ions on these subjects, and I am bound to respect Mr. Jor- 
kins’s opinions. Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand pounds too 
little, in short.”’ 

‘‘T suppose, sir,’’ said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, 
‘‘that it is not the custom here, if an articled clerk were par- 
ticularly useful, and made himself a perfect master of his 
profession’’—1l could not help blushing, this looked so like 
praising myself—‘‘I suppose it is not the custom in the later 
years of his time to allow him any—”’ 


416 Works of Charles Dickens 


Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far 
enough out of his cravat, to shake it, and answered, antici- 
pating the word ‘“‘salary.”’ 

‘‘No. I will not say what consideration I might give to 
that point myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered. 
Mr. Jorkins is immovable.”’ | 

I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. 
But 1 found out afterward that he was a mild man of a heavy 
temperament, whose place in the business was to keep him- 
self in the background, and be constantly exhibited by name 
as the most obdurate and ruthless of men. If a clerk wanted 
his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins wouldn’t listen to such a 
proposition. If a client were slow to settle his bill of costs, 
Mr. Jorkins was resolved to have it paid; and however pain- 
ful these things might be (and always were) to the feelings 
of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would have his bond. The 
heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would have been 
always open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I 
have grown older, | think I have had experience of some 
other houses doing business on the principle of Spenlow & 
Jorkins. 

It was settled that I should begin my month’s probation 
as soon as I pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain 
in town nor return at its expiration, as the articles of agree- 
ment of which I was to be the subject could easily be sent to 
her at home for her signature. When we had got so far, 
Mr. Spenlow offered to take me into Court then and there, 
and show me what sort of place it was. As I was willing 
enough to know, we went out with this object, leaving my 
aunt behind; who would trust herself, she said, in no such 
place, and who, I think, regarded all Courts of Law as a sort 
of powder-mills that might blow up at any time. 

Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard 
formed of grave brick houses, which I inferred, from the 
doctors’ names upon the doors, to be the official abiding- 
places of the learned advocates of whom Steerforth had told 
me; and into a large dull room, not unlike a chapel to my 


David Gopperfield 41% 


thinking, on the left hand. The upper part of this room was 
,fenced off from the rest; and there, on the two sides of a 
raised platform of the horse-shoe form, sitting on easy old- 
fashioned dining-room chairs, were sundry gentlemen in red 
gowns and gray wigs, whom | found to be the doctors afore- 
said. Blinking over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in the 
curve of the horse-shoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I 
had seen him in an aviary, I should certainly have taken 
for an ow], but who, I learned, was the presiding judge. In 
the space within the horse-shoe, lower than these—that is to 
say on about the level of the floor—were sundry other gentle- 
men of Mr. Spenlow’s rank, and dressed like him in black 
gowns with white fur upon them, sitting at a long green 
table. Their cravats were in general stiff, I thought, and 
their looks haughty; but in this last respect I presently con- 
ceived 1 had done them an injustice, for when two or three 
of them had to rise and answer a question of the presiding 
dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish. The public 
represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel 
man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was 
warming itself at a stove in the center of the Court. The 
languid stillness of the place was only broken by the chirping 
of this fire and by the voice of one of the doctors, who was 
wandering slowly through a perfect library of evidence, and 
stopping to put up, from time to time, at little roadside inns 
of argument on the journey. Altogether, | have never, on 
any occasion, made one at such a cosy, dozy, old-fashioned, 
time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family party in all my 
life; and 1 felt it would be quite a soothing’ opiate to belong 
to it in any character—except perhaps as a suitor. 

Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, 
I informed Mr Spenlow that I had seen enough for that 
time, and we rejoined my aunt; in company with whom I 
presently departed from the Commons, feeling very young 
when I went out of Spenlow & Jorkins’s, on account of the 
clerks poking one another with their pens to point me out. 

We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new ad- 

Vou. II—(14) 


418 Works of Charles Dickens 


ventures except encountering an unlucky donkey in a cos- 
termonger’s cart, who suggested painful associations to my. 
aunt. We had another long talk about my plans, when we 
were safely housed; and as 1 knew she was anxious to get 
home, and, between fire, food, and pickpockets could never 
be considered at her ease for half an hour in London, I[ urged 
her not to'be uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me 
to take care of myself. 

‘‘] have not been here a week to-morrow without con- 
sidering that, too, my dear,’’ she returned. ‘‘There is a 
furnished little set of chambers to be let in the Adelphi, 
Trot, which ought to suit you to a marvel.”’ 

With this brief introduction, she produced from her 
pocket an advertisement, carefully cut out of a newspaper, 
setting forth that in Buckingham Street in the Adelphi there 
was to be let furnished, with a view of the river, a singular- 
ly desirable and compact set of chambers, forming a genteel 
residence for a young gentleman, a member of one of the 
Inns of Court, or otherwise, with immediate possession. 
Terms moderate, and could be taken for a month only, if 
required. 

‘‘Why, this is the very thing, aunt,’’ said I, flushed with 
the possible dignity of living in chambers. 

‘Then come,’’ replied my aunt, immediately resuming 
the bonnet she had a minute before laid aside. ‘‘We’ll go 
and look at ’em.”’ 

Away we went. The advertisement directed us to apply 
to Mrs. Crupp on the premises, and we rang the area bell, 
which we supposed to communicate with Mrs. Crupp. It 
was not until we had rung three or four times that we could 
prevail on Mrs. Crupp to communicate with us, but at last 
she appeared, being a stout lady with a flounce of flannel 
petticoat below a nankeen gown. 

‘Let us see these chambers of yours, if you please, 
ma’am,’’ said my aunt. 

‘‘For this gentleman?’’ said Mrs. Crupp, feeling in her 
pocket for her keys. 


David Gopperfield 419 


*“Yes, for my nephew,’’ said my aunt. 

‘‘ And a sweet set they is for sich!’ said Mrs. Crupp. 

So we went upstairs. 

They were on the top of the house—a great point with 
my aunt, being near the fire-escape—and consisted of a little 
half-blind entry where you could see hardly anything, a lit- 
tle stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing at all, a 
sitting-room, and a bed-room. The furniture was rather 
faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the 
river was outside the windows. 

As I was delighted with the place, my aunt and Mrs. - 
Crupp withdrew into the pantry to discuss the terms, while I 
remained on the sitting-room sofa, hardly daring to think it 
possible that I could be destined to live in such a noble resi- 
dence. After a single combat of some duration, they re- 
turned, and I saw, to my joy, both in Mrs. Crupp’s counte- 
nance and in my aunt’s, that the deed was done. 

“Is it the last occupant’s furniture?’’ inquired my aunt. 

‘*Yes, it is, ma’am,’’ said Mrs. Crupp. 

‘*What’s become of him?’’ asked my aunt. 

Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome cough, in the 
midst of which she articulated with much difficulty. ‘‘He 
was took ill here, ma’am, and—ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me!— 
and he died.”’’ 

“Hey! What did he die of?’ asked my aunt. 

“‘Well, ma’am, he died of drink,’’ said Mrs. Crupp, in 
confidence. ‘‘And smoke.”’ 

““Smoke? You don’t mean chiraneys?’’ said my aunt. 

‘“‘No, ma’am,’’ returned Mrs. Crupp. ‘‘Cigars and 
pipes.”’ 

'“That’s not catching, Trot, at any rate,’? remarked my 
aunt, turning to me. 

**No, indeed,’ said I. 

In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured 1 was with the 
premises, took them for a month, with leave to remain for 
twelve months when that time was out. Mrs. Crupp was to 
find linen, and to cook; every other necessary was already 


4.20 Works of Charles Dickens 


provided; and Mrs. Crupp expressly intimated that she 
should always yearn toward me as a son. 1 was to take 
possession the day after to-morrow, and Mrs. Crupp said 
thank heaven she had now found summun she could care for! 

On our way back my aunt informed me how she confi- 
dently trusted that the life I was now to lead would make 
me firm and self-reliant, which was all I wanted. She re- 
peated this several times next day, in the intervals of our 


{oo Se SSS 
r 


— 





AND MRS. CRUPP SAID, THANK HEAVEN SHE HAD NOW FOUND SUMMUN SHE COULD CARE FoR ! 


arranging for the transmission of my clothes and books from 
Mr. Wickfield’s; relative to which, and to all my late holi- 
day, I wrote a long letter to Agnes, of which my aunt took 
charge, as she was to leave on the succeeding day. Not to 
lengthen these particulars, I need only add, that she made a 
handsome provision for all my possible wants during my 
month of trial; that Steerforth, to my great disappointment, 
and hers, too, did not make his appearance before she went 
away; that 1 saw her safely seated in the Dover coach, ex- 





Dauid Copperfield 421 


ulting, in the coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys, 
with Janet at her side; and that when the coach was gone I 
turned my face to the Adelphi, pondering on the old days 
when I used to roam about its subterranean arches, and on 
the happy changes which had brought me to the surface. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 
MY FIRST DISSIPATION 


It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle 
to myself, and to feel, when I shut my outer door, like Robin- 
son Crusoe, when he had got into his fortification, and pulled 
his ladder up after him. It was a wonderfully fine thing to 
walk about town with the key of my house in my pocket, and 
to know that 1 could ask any fellow to come home, and make 
quite sure of its being inconvenient to nobody, if it were not 
so to me. It was a wonderfully fine thing to let myself in 
and out, and to come and go without a word to any one, and 
to ring Mrs. Crupp up, gasping, from the depths of the earth, 
when I wanted her—and when she was disposed to come. 
All this, I say, was wonderfully fine; but I must say, too, 
that there were times when it was very dreary. 

It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine morn- 
ings. It looked a very fresh, free life, by daylight; still 
fresher and more free, by sunlight. But as the day declined, 
the life seemed to go down, too. I don’t know how it was; 
it seldom looked well by candle-light. I wanted somebody 
to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous 
blank, in the place of that smiling repositary of my conti- 
dence. Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off. I thought 
about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke, and 
1 could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not 
bother me with his decease. 

After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there 


422 Works of Charles Dickens 


for a year, and yet 1 was not an hour older, but was quite as 
much tormented by my own youthfulness as ever. 

Steerforth not yet approaching, which induced me to ap- 
prehend that he must be ill, I left the Commons early on the 
third day, and walked out to Highgate. Mrs. Steerforth was 
very glad to see me, and said that he had gone away with 
one of his Oxford friends to see anotler who lived near St. 
Alban’s, but that she expected him to return to-morrow. I 
was so fond of him that I felt quite jealous of his Oxford 
friends. 

As she pressed me to stay to dinner, I remained, and I 
believe we talked about nothing but him all day. I told her 
how much the people liked him at Yarmouth, and what a 
delightful companion he had been. Miss Dartle was full 
of hints, and mysterious questions, but took a great interest 
in all our proceedings there, and said, ‘‘was it really, 
though?’’ and so forth, so often that she got everything 
out of me that she wanted to know. Her appearance was 
exactly what I have described it, when I first saw her; but 
the society of the two ladies was so agreeable, and came so 
natural to me, that I felt myself falling a little in love with 
her. I could not help thinking, several times in the course 
of the evening, and particularly when I walked home at 
night, what delightful company she would be in Bucking- 
ham Street. 

I was taking my coffee and roll in the morning before 
going to the Commons—and I may observe in this place that 
it is surprising how much coffee Mrs. Crupp used, and how 
weak it was, considering—when Steerforth himself walked 
in, to my unbounded joy. 

‘‘My dear Steerforth,’’ cried I, ‘‘I began to think I should 
never see you again!”’ 

‘*T was carried off, by force of arms,’’ said Steerforth, ‘‘the 
very next morning after I got home. Why, Daisy, what a 
rare old bachelor you are here!’ Bit 

I showed him over the establishment, not omitting the 
pantry, with no little pride, and he commended it highly. 





David Copperfield 423 


**L tell you what, old boy,’’ he added, ‘‘I shall make quite 
a town-house of this place, unless you give me notice to 
quit.”’ 

This was a delightful hearing. I told him if he waited 
for that, he would have to wait till doomsday. 

**But you shall have some breakfast!’ said 1, with my 
hand on the bell-rope, ‘‘and Mrs. Crupp shall make you some 
fresh coffee, and I’ll toast you some bacon in a bachelor’s 
Dutch-oven that 1 have got here.’’ 

*‘No, no!’ said Steerforth. ‘‘Don’t ring! I can’t! I 
am going to breakfast with one of these fellows who is at 
the Piazza Hotel, in Covent Garden.’’ 

“*But you'll come back to dinner?’’ said I. 

‘I can’t, upon my life. There’s nothing I should like 
better, but I must remain with these two fellows. We are 
all three off together to-morrow morning.”’ 

*“Then bring them here to dinner,’’ I returned. ‘‘Do you 
think they would come?”’ 

‘‘Oh! they would come fast enough,’’ said Steerforth; 
‘‘but we should inconvenience you. You had better come 
and dine with us somewhere.”’ 

I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred 
to me that I really ought to have a little house-warming, and 
that there never could be a better opportunity. I had a new 
pride in my rooms after his approval of them, and burned 
with a desire to develop their utmost resources. I therefore 
made him promise positively in the names of his two friends, 
and we appointed six o’clock as the dinner-time. 

When he was gone, | rang for Mrs. Crupp, and acquainted 
her with my desperate design. Mrs. Crupp said, in the first 
place, of course it was well known she couldn’t be expected 
to wait, but she knew a handy young man, who she thought 
could be prevailed upon to do it, and whose terms would be 
five shillings, and what I pleased. I said, certainly we would 
have him. Next, Mrs. Crupp said it was clear she couldn’t 
be in two places at once (which I felt to be reasonable), and 
that ‘‘a young gal’’ stationed in the pantry with a bed-room 


424 Works of Charles Diekens 


candle, there never to desist from washing plates, would be 
indispensable. I said, what would be the expense of this 
young female, and Mrs. Crupp said she supposed eighteen- 
pence would neither make me nor break me. I said I sup- 
posed not; and that was settled. Then Mrs. Crupp said, 
Now about the dinner. 

It was a remarkable instance of want of forethought on the 
part of the ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp’s kitchen 
fireplace, that it was capable of cooking nothing but chops 
and mashed potatoes. As to a fish-kettle, Mrs. Crupp said, 
well! would I only come and look at the range. She couldn’t 
say fairer than that. Would I come and look at it?. As I 
should not have been much the wiser if I had looked at it, 
I declined, and said, ‘‘Never mind fish.’? But Mrs. Crupp 
said, Don’t say that; oysters was in, and why not them? 
So that was settled. Mrs. Crupp then said what she would 
recommend would be this. A pair of hot roast fowls—from 
the pastry-cook’s; a dish of stewed beef, with vegetables— 
from’ the pastry-cook’s; two little corner things, as a raised 
pie and a dish of kidneys—from the pastry cook’s; a tart, 
and (if I liked) a shape of jelly—from the pastry-cook’s. 
This, Mrs. Crupp said, would leave her at full liberty to 
concentrate her mind on the potatoes, and to serve up the 
cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done. 

I acted on Mrs. Crupp’s opinion, and gave the order at 
the pastry-cook’s myself. Walking along the Strand, after- 
ward, and observing a hard mottled substance in the window 
of a ham and beef shop, which resembled marble, but was 
Jabeled ‘‘Mock Turtle,’? I went in and bought a slab of it, 
which [I have since seen reason to believe would have sufficed 
for fifteen people. This preparation, Mrs. Crupp, after some 
difficulty, consented to warm up; and it shrank so much in 
a liquid state that we found it what Steerforth called ‘‘rather 
a tight fit’’ for four. 

These preparations happily completed, I bought a little 
dessert in Covent Garden Market, and gave a rather exten- 
sive order at a retail wine-merchant’s in that vicinity. When 


David Copperfield 425 


I came home in the afternoon, and saw the bottles drawn up 
in a square on the pantry-floor, they looked so numerous 
(though there were two missing, which made Mrs. Crupp 
very uncomfortable), that I was absolutely frightened at 
them. 

One of Steerforth’s friends was named Grainger, and the 
other Markham. They were both very gay and lively fel- 
lows: Grainger, something older than Steerforth; Markham, 
youthful-looking, and I should say not more than twenty. I 
observed that the latter always spoke of himself indefinitely, 
as ‘‘a man,’’ and seldom or never in the first person singular. 

‘“‘A man might get on very well here, Mr. Copperfield,’’ 
said Markham—meaning himself. 

‘‘Tt’s not a bad situation,’’ said I, ‘‘and the rooms are 
really commodious.”’ 

‘J hope you have both brought appetites with you?”’ said 
Steerforth. 

‘‘Upon my honor,’’ returned Markham, ‘‘town seems to 
sharpen a man’s appetite. A man is hungry all day long. 
A man is perpetually eating.”’ 

Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too 
young to preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the 
table when dinner was announced, and seated myself opposite 
to him. Everything was very good; we did not spare the 
wine, and he exerted himself so brilliantly to make the thing 
pass off well that there was no pause in our festivity. I was 
not quite such good company during dinner as I could have 
wished to be, for my chair was opposite the door, and my 
attention was distracted by observing that the handy young 
man went out of the room very often, and that his shadow 
always presented itself, immediately afterward, on the wall 
of the entry, with a bottle at his mouth. The ‘‘young gal’’ 
likewise occasioned me some uneasiness; not so much by 
neglecting to wash the plates, as by breaking them. For 
being of an inquisitive disposition, and unable to confine her- 
self (as her positive instructions were) to the pantry, she was 
constantly peering in at us, and constantly imagining herself 


426 Works of Charles Dickens 


detected; in which belief she several times retired upon the 
plates (with which she had carefully paved the floor), and 
did a great deal of destruction. 

These, however, were small drawbacks, and easily for- 
gotten when the cloth was cleared and the dessert put on the 
table; at which period of the entertainment the handy young 
man was discovered to be speechless. Giving him private 
directions to seek the society of Mrs. Crupp, and to remove 
the ‘‘young gal’’ to the basement also, 1 abandoned myself 
to enjoyment. 

I began by being singularly cheerful and light-hearted ; 
all sorts of half-forgotten things to talk about, came rushing 
into my mind, and made me hold forth in a most unwonted 
manner. 1 laughed heartily at my own jokes, and everybody 
else’s; called Steerforth to order for not passing the wine; 
made several engagements to go to Oxford; announced that 
I meant to have a dinner-party exactly like that once a week 
until further notice; and madly took so much snuff out of 
Grainger’s box that I was obliged to go into the pantry and 
have a private fit of sneezing for minutes long. 

I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and 
continually starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine 
long before any was needed. I proposed Steerforth’s health. 
I said he was my dearest friend, the protector of my boyhood, 
and the companion of my prime. I said I was delighted to 
propose his health. 1 said 1 owed him more obligations than 
I could ever repay, and held him in a higher admiration than 
I could ever express. I finished by saying, ‘‘]’ll give you 
Steerforth! God blesshim! Hurrah!’ We gave him three 
times three, and another, and a good one to finish with. I 
broke my glass in going round the table to shake hands with 
him, and I said (in two words) ‘‘Steerforth, you’retheguiding- 
starofmyexistence.’”’ 

I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the 
middle of a song. Markham was the singer, and he sang 
**When the heart of a man is depressed with care.’’ He said, 
when he had sung it, he would give us ‘‘Woman!’’ 1 took 


David Gopperfield 427 


objection to that, and I couldn’t allow it. I said it was not 
a respectful way of proposing the toast, and I would never 
permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as 
‘“The ladies!’ I was very high with him, mainly, I think, 
because I saw Steerforth and Grainger laughing at me—or 
at him—or at both of us. He said a man was not to be dic- 
tated to. I said a man was. He said a man was not to be 
insulted, then. I said he was right there—never under my 
roof, where the Lares were sacred and the laws of hospitality 
paramount. He said it was no derogation from a man’s 
dignity to confess that I was a devilish good fellow. I in- 
stantly proposed his health. 

Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. J was 
smoking, and trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder. 
Steerforth had made a speech about me, in the course of 
which I had been affected almost to tears. 1 returned thanks, 
and hoped the present company would dine with me to-mor- 
row, and the day after—each day at five o’clock, that we 
might enjoy the pleasures of conversation and society through 
alongevening. I felt called upon to propose an individual. 
I would give them my aunt. Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best 
of her sex! 

Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, re- 
freshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, 
and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was 
addressing myself as ‘‘Copperfield,’’ and saying, ‘‘Why did | 
you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn’t do 
it.”” Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his feat- 
ures in the Jooking-glass. That was I, too. I was very pale 
in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant’ appearance; and 
my hair—only my hair, nothing else—looked drunk. 

Somebody said to me, ‘‘Let us go to the theater, Copper- 
field!’? There was no bedroom before me, but again the 
jingling table covered with glasses; the lamp; Grainger on 
my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth opposite 
—all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. The theater? To 
be sure. The very thing. Come along! But they must 


428 Works of Charles Dickens 


excuse me if I saw everybody out first, and turned the lamp 
off—in case of fire. 

Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was. gone. 
I was feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, 
laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went 
downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom somebody 
fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. 
I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my 
back in the passage, I began to think there might be some 
foundation for it. 

A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in 
the streets! There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. 
I considered it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamp- 
post, and put my hat into shape, which somebody produced 
from somewhere ina most extraordinary manner; for I hadn’t 
had it on before. Steerforth then said: ‘‘ You are all right, 
Copperfield, are you not?’’ and I told him, ‘‘Neverberrer.” 

A man sitting in a pigeon-hole-place looked out of the fog, 
and took money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the 
gentlemen paid for, and appearing rather doubtful (as I re- 
member in the glimpse I had of him) whether to take the 
money for me or not. Shortly afterward we were very high 
up in a very hot theater, looking down into a large pit, that - 
seemed to me to smoke, the people with whom it was crammed 
were so indistinct. 

There was a great stage, too, looking very clean and 
smooth after the streets; and there were people upon it, 
talking about something or other, but not at all intelligibly. 
There was an abundance of bright lights, and there was 
music, and there were ladies down in the boxes, and I don’t 
know what more. The whole building looked to me as if it 
were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an unac- 
countable manner, when I tried to steady it. 

On somebody’s motion, we resolved to go downstairs to 
the dress-boxes, where the ladies were. A gentleman loung- 
ing, full-dressed, on a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, 
passed before my view, and also my own figure at full length 


David @opperfield 429 


ina glass. Then I was being ushered into one of these boxes, 
and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people 
about me crying ‘‘Silence!’’ to somebody, and ladies casting 
indignant glances at me, and—what! yes!—Agnes sitting on 
the seat before me, in the same box, with a lady and gentle- 
man beside her whom I didn’t know. 1 see her face now, 
better than I did then, I daresay, with its indelible look of 
regret and wonder turned upon me. 

**Agnes!’’ I said, thickly, ‘‘Lorblessmer! Agnes!”’ 

‘“‘Hush! Pray!’ she answered, I could not conceive why. 
‘*You disturb the company. Look at the stage!”’ 

I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something 
of what was going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at 
her again by-and-by, and saw her shrink into her corner, and 
put her gloved hand to her forehead. 

‘‘Agnes!’’ IL said. ‘‘?’mafraidyou’renorwell.’’ 

‘*Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood,’’ she returned. 
‘‘Listen! Are you going away soon?”’ 

‘‘AmIgoarawaysoo?’’ I repeated. 

Si Vrasg??? 

I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to 
wait, to hand her downstairs. I suppose I expressed it, 
somehow; for after she had looked at me attentively for a 
little while, she appeared to understand, and replied in a 
low tone: 

‘“1 know you will do as I ask you, if 1 tell you I am very 
earnest in it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and 
ask your friends to take you home.”’ 

She had so far improved me, for the time, that though l 
was angry with her, I felt ashamed, and with a short 
“Goori!’? (which I intended for ‘‘Good-night!’’) got up and 
went away. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the 
box-door into my bedroom, where only Steerforth was with 
me, helping me to undress, and where I was by turns telling 
him that Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to bring 
the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine. 

How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing 


430 Works of @harles Dickens 


all this over again, at cross-purposes, in a feverish dream all 
night—the bed a rocking sea, that was never still! How, as 
that. somebody slowly settled down into myself, did I begin 
to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of skin were a hard 
board; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, furred with 
long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of 
my hands hot plates of metal which no ice could cool! 

But. the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame | felt, 
when I became conscious next day! My horror of having 
committed a thousand offenses I had forgotten, and which 
nothing could ever expiate—my recollection of that indelible 
look which Agnes had given me—the torturing impossibility 
of communicating with her, not knowing, beast that 1 was, 
how she came to be in London, or where she stayed—my 
disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had 
been held—my racking head—the smell of smoke, the sight 
of glasses, the impossibility of going out, or even getting up! 
Oh! what a day it was! 

Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a 
basin of mutton broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought 
I was going the way of my predecessor, and should succeed 
to his dismal story as well as to his chambers, and had half 
a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal all! What an 
evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away thé broth- 
basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate as the entire 
remains of yesterday’s feast, and I was really inclined to fall 
upon her nankeen breast, and say, in heartfelt penitence: 
‘‘Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp, never mind the broken meats! 
I am very miserable!’’—only that I doubted, even at that 
pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to con- 
fide in! 


David Gopperfield 431 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 
GOOD AND BAD ANGELS 


I was going out at my door on the morning after that 
deplorable day of headache, sickness, and repentance, with 
an odd confusion in my mind relative to the date of my 
dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had taken an enormous 
lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months back, 
when I saw a ticket-porter coming upstairs, with a letter in 
his hand. He was taking his time about his errand, then; 
but when he saw me on the top of the staircase, looking at 
him over the banisters, he swung into a trot, and came up 
panting as if he had run himself into a state of exhaustion. 

‘“T. Copperfield, Esquire,’’ said the ticket-porter, touch- 
ing his hat with his little cane. 

I could scarcely lay claim to the name, I was so disturbed 
by the conviction that the letter came from Agnes. How- 
ever, I told him I was T. Copperfield, Esquire, and he be- 
lieved it, and gave me the letter, which he said required an 
answer. I shut him out on the landing to wait for the 
answer, and went into my chambers again, in such a nervous 
state that 1 was fain to lay the letter down on my breakfast- 
table, and familiarize myself with the outside of it a little, 
before I could resolve to break the seal. 

I found, when | did open it, that it was a very kind note, 
containing no reference to my condition at the theater. All - 
it said was, ‘‘My dear Trotwood. I am staying at the house 
of papa’s agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in Ely Place, Holborn. 
Will you come and see me to-day, at any time you like to 
appoint? Ever yours affectionately, AGNES.”’ 

It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to 
my satisfaction that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can 
have thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I 
must have written half-a-dozen answers at least. I began 


A432 Works of Charles Dickens 


one, ‘‘How can I ever hope, my dear Agnes, to efface from 
your remembrance the disgusting impression’’—there I didn’t 
like it, and then 1 toreitup. 1 began another, ‘‘Shakespeare 
has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is that a man 
should put an enemy into his mouth’’—that reminded me of 
Markham, and it got no further. 1 even tried poetry. I 
began one note, in a six-syllable line, ‘‘Oh, do not remember”’ 
—but that associated itself with the fifth of November, and 
became an absurdity. After many attempts, I wrote: ‘“‘My 
dear Agnes. Your letter is like you, and what could I say 
of it that would be higher praise than that? I will come 
at four o’clock. Affectionately and sorrowfully, T. C.’’ 
With this missive’ (which I was in twenty minds at once 
about recalling, as soon as it was out of my hands), the 
ticket-porter at last departed. 

If the day were half as tremendous to any other profes- 
sional gentleman in Doctor’s Commons as it was to me, I 
sincerely believe he made some expiation for his share in 
that rotten old ecclesiastical cheese. Although I left the 
office at half-past three, and was prowling about the place 
of appointment within a few minutes afterward, the ap- 
pointed time was exceeded by a full quarter of an hour, 
according to the clock of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, before I 
could muster up sufficient desperation to pull the private 
bell-handle let into the left-hand door-post of Mr. Water- 
brook’s house. ) 

The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook’s establish- 
ment was done on the ground floor, and the genteel business 
(of which there was a good deal) in the upper part of the 
building. I was shown into a pretty but rather close draw- 
ing-room, and there sat Agnes, netting a purse. 

She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly 
of my airy-fresh school-days at Canterbury, and the sodden, 
smoky, stupid wretch 1 had been the other night, that, no- 
body being by, I yielded to my self-reproach and shame, and 
—in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot deny that 1 shed — 
tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon the ~ 


David Copperfield 433 


whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most 
ridiculous. 

**Tf it had been any one but you, Agnes,’’ said I, turning 
away my head, ‘‘I should not have minded it half so much. 
But that it should have been you who saw me! I almost 
wish I had been dead first.’’ 

She put her hand—its touch was like no other hand— 
upon my arm for a moment, and I felt so befriended and 
comforted that I could not help moving it to my lips, and 
gratefully kissing it. 

**Sit down,’’ said Agnes, cheerfully. ‘‘Don’t be unhappy, 
Trotwood. If you cannot confidently trust me, whom will 
you trust?’’ 

*‘Ah, Agnes!’ I returned. ‘‘You are my good Angel!’’ 

She smiled rather sadly, 1 thought, and shook her head. 

“Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good angel!’’ 

‘“‘Tf I were indeed, Trotwood,’’ she returned, ‘‘there is one 
thing that I should set my heart on very much.”’ 

I looked at her inquiringly, but already with a fore- 
knowledge of her meaning. 

‘On warning you,”’ said Agnes, with a steady glance, 
‘‘against your bad Angel.”’ 

‘*My dear Agnes,’’ I began, “‘if you mean Steerforth—’’ 

**T do, Trotwood,’’ she returned. 

‘*Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much. He my bad 
Angel, or any one’s! He, anything but a guide, a support, 
and a friend tome! Mydear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, 
and unlike you, to judge him from what you saw of me the 
other night?”’ 

“1 do not judge him from what I saw of you the other 
night,’’ she quietly replied. 

‘*Hrom what then?’’ 

‘‘From many things—trifles in themselves, but they do 
not seem to me to be so, when they are put together. l 
judge him partly from your account of him, Trotwood, and 
your character, and the influence he has over you.”’ 

There was always something in her modest voice that 


434. Works of Charles Dickens 


seemed to touch a chord within me, answering to that sound 
alone. It was always earnest; but when it was very earnest, 
as it was now, there was a thrill in it that quite subdued me. 
I sat looking at her as she cast her eyes down on her work. 
I sat seeming still to listen to her, and Steerforth, in spite of 
all my attachment to him, darkened in that tone. 

‘Tt is very bold in me,’’ said Agnes, looking up again, 
‘‘who have lived in such seclusion, and can know so little 
of the world, to give you my advice so confidently, or even to 
have this strong opinion. But Il know in what it is engen- 
dered, Trotwood—in how true a remembrance of our having 
grown up together, and in how true an interest in all relat- 
ing to you. It is that which makes me bold. Iam certain 
that what I say is right. 1 am quite sure it is. I feel as 
if it were some one else speaking to you, and not I, when 
I caution you that you have made a dangerous friend.’’ 

Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she 
was silent, and again his image, though it was still fixed in 
my heart, darkened. 

‘‘T am not so unreasonable as to expect,’’ said Agnes, re- 
suming her usual tone, after a little while, ‘‘that you will, or 
that you can, at once, chanye any sentiment that has become 
a conviction to you; least of all a sentiment that is rooted in 
your trusting disposition. You ought not hastily to do that. 
1 only ask you, Trotwood, if you ever think of me—I mean,”’’ 
with a quiet smile, for I was going to interrupt her, and she 
knew why, ‘‘as often as you think of. me—to think of what 
IT have said. Do you forgive me for all this?’’ 

‘*] will forgive you, Agnes,’’ I replied, ‘‘when you come 
to do Steerforth justice, and to like him as well as I do.”’ 

‘‘Not until then?’’ said Agnes. 

I saw a passing shadow on her face when I made this 
mention of him, but she returned my smile, and we were 
again as unreserved in our mutual confidence as of old. 

‘‘And when, Agnes,’’ said I, ‘‘will you forgive me the 
other night?”’ 

‘When I recall it,’’ said Agnes. 


David Gopperfield 435 


She would have dismissed the subject so, but 1 was too 
full of it to allow that, and insisted on telling her how it 
happened that 1 disgraced myself, and what chain of acci- 
dental circumstances had had the theater for its final link. 
It was a great relief to me to do this, and to enlarge on the 
obligation that I owed to Steerforth for his care of me when 
I was unable to take care of myself. 

“You must not forget,’’ said Agnes, calmly changing the 
conversation as soon as 1 had concluded, ‘‘that you are al- 
ways to tell me, not only when you fall into trouble, but 
when you fall in love. Who has succeeded to Miss Larkins, 
Trotwood ?”’ : 

‘*No one, Agnes.’ 

‘Some one, Trotwood,’’ said Agnes, laughing, and Bake 
ing up her finger. 

‘“No, Agnes, upon my word! There is a lady, certainly, 
at Mrs. Steerforth’s house, who is very clever, and whom I 
like to talk to—Miss Dartle—but 1 don’t adore her.”’ 

Agnes laughed again at her own penetration, and told me 
that if I were faithful to her in my confidence she thought 
she should keep a little register of my violent attachments, 
with the date, duration, and termination of each, like the 
table of the reigns of the kings and queens, in the History 
of England. Then she asked me if I had seen Uriah. 

““Uriah Heep?”’ said I. ‘‘No. Is he in London?’’ 

**He comes to the office downstairs every day,’’ returned 
Agnes. ‘‘He was in Londona week beforeme. I am afraid 
on disagreeable business, Trotwood.”’ 

“*On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,”’ 
said 1. ‘‘What can that be?’’ 

Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands 
upon one another, and looking pensively at me out of those 
beautiful soft eyes of hers: 

*‘T believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.”’ 

“What? Uriah? That mean, fawning fellow, worm him- 
self into such promotion?’’ I cried, indignantly. ‘‘Have you 
made no remonstrance about it, Agnes. Consider what @ 


436 Works of @harles Dickens 


connection it is likely to be. You must speak out. You 
must not allow your father to take such a mad step. You 
must prevent it, Agnes, while there’s time.”’ 

Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was 
speaking, with a faint smile at my warmth; and then replied: 

‘“‘You remember our last conversation about papa? It 
was not long after that—not more than two or three days 
—when he gave me the first intimation of what I tell you. 
Tt was sad to see him struggling between his desire to rep- 
resent it to me as a matter of choice on his part, and his 
inability to conceal that it was forced upon him. I felt 
very sorry.”’ 

‘‘Forced upon him, Agnes? Who forces it upon him?’’ 

‘‘Uriah,’’ she replied, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘‘has 
made himself indispensable to papa. He is subtle and 
watchful. He has mastered papa’s weaknesses, fostered 
them, and taken advantage of them, until—to say all that 
1 mean in a word, Trotwood—until papa is afraid of him.”’ 

There was more that she might have said; more that she 
knew, or that she suspected,I clearly saw. I could not give 
her pain by asking what it was, for 1 knew that she withheld 
it from me to spare her father. It had long been going on to 
this, I was sensible; yes, I could not but feel, on the least 
reflection, that it had been going on to this for a long time. 
I remained silent. 

‘*His ascendancy over papa,’’ said Agnes, ‘‘is very great. 
He professes humility and gratitude—with truth, perhaps; I 
hope so—but his position is really one of power, and I fear 
he makes a hard use of his power.”’ 

I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great 
satisfaction to me. 

‘* At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to 
me,’’ pursued Agnes, ‘‘he had told papa that he was going 
away; that he was very sorry and unwilling to leave, but that 
he had better prospects. Papa was very much depressed then, 
and more bowed down by care than ever you or I have seen 
him; but be seemed relieved by this expedient of the partner- 


’ 


David Gopperfield 437 


ship, though at the same time he seemed hurt by it and 
ashamed of it.’’ 

‘‘And how did you receive it, Agnes?’’ 

**T did, Trotwood,’’ she replied, ‘‘what I hope was right. 
_ Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the 
sacrifice should be made, 1 entreated him to make it. I said 
it would lighten the load of his life—I hope it will!—and that 
it would give me increased opportunities of being his com- 
panion, Oh, Trotwood!’ cried Agnes, putting her hands 
before her face, as her tears started on it, ‘‘I almost feel as 
if I had been papa’s enemy, instead of his loving child. For 
I know how he has altered, in his devotion to me. I know 
how he has narrowed the circle of his sympathies and duties, 
in the concentration of his whole mind upon me. I know 
what a multitude of things he has shut out for my sake, and 
how his anxious thoughts of me have shadowed his life, and 
weakened his strength and energy, by turning them always 
upon one idea. If I could ever set this right! If I could 
ever work out his restoration, as I have so innocently been 
the cause of his decline!’’ 

I had never before seen Agnes cry. I had seen tears in 
her eyes when | had brought new honors home from school, 
and I had seen them there when we last spoke about her 
father, and I had seen her turn her gentle head aside when 
we took leave of one another; but [had never seen her grieve 
like this. It made me so sorry that 1 could only say, in a 
foolish, helpless manner, ‘‘Pray, Agnes, don’t! Don’t, my 
dear sister!’’ 

But Agnes was too superior to me in character and. pur- 
pose, as I know well now, whatever I might know or not 
know then, to be long in need of my entreaties. The beau- 
tiful, calm manner which makes her so different in my 
remembrance from everybody else, came back again, as 
if a cloud had passed from a serene sky. 

‘‘We are not likely to remain alone much longer,” said 
Agnes, ‘‘and while I have an opportunity, let me earnestly 
entreat you, Trotwood, to be friendly to Uriah. Don’t 


438 Works of Charles Diekens 


repel him. Don’t resent (as I think you have a general dis- 
position to do) what may be uncongenial to youin him. He 
may not deserve it, for we know no certain ill of him. In 

any case, think first of papa and me!”’ ‘ 

Agnes had no time to say more, for the room door opened, 
and Mrs. Waterbrook, who was a large lady—or who wore a 
large dress; I don’t know exactly which, for I don’t know 
which was dress and which was lady—came sailing in. I 
had a dim recollection of having seen her at the theater, as 
if I had seen her in a pale magic lantern; but she appeared 
to remember me perfectly, and still to suspect me of being 
in a state of intoxication. | 

Finding by degrees, however, that I was sober, and (1 
hope) that I was a modest young gentleman, Mrs. Water- 
brook softened toward me considerably, and inquired, firstly, 
if I went much into the parks, and secondly, if I went much 
into society. On my replying to both these questions in the 
negative, it occurred to me that I fell again in her good 
opinion; but she concealed the fact gracefully, and invited 
me to dinner next day. I accepted the invitation, and took 
my leave, making a call on Uriah in the office as I bie out, 
and leaving a card for him in his absence. 

When I went to dinner next day, and, on the street-door 
being opened, plunged into a vapor-bath of haunch of mutton, 
I divined that I was not the only guest; for I immediately 
identified the ticket-porter in disguise, assisting the family 
servant, and waiting at the foot. of the stairs to carry up my 
name. He looked, to the best of his ability, when he asked 
me for it confidentially, as if he had never seen me before; 
but well did I know him, and well did he know me. Con- 
science made cowards of us both. 

I found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, 
with a short throat and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only 
wanted a black nose to be the portrait of a pug dog. He told 
me he was happy to have the honor of making my acquaint- 
ance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs. Waterbrook, 
presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in 


David Copperfield 439 


a black velvet dress and a great black velvet hat, whom I 
remember as looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s—say 
his aunt. | 

Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady’s name, and her husband 
was there, too: so cold a man that his head, instead of being 
gray, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense def- 
erence was shown to the Henry Spikers, male and female, 
which Agnes told me was on account of Mr. Henry Spiker 
being solicitor to something or to somebody, | forget what or 
which, remotely connected with the Treasury. 

I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a suit of 
black, and in deep humility. He told me, when I shook 
hands with him, that he was proud to be noticed by me, and 
that he really felt obliged to me for my condescension. I 
could have wished he had been less obliged to me, for he 
hovered about me in his gratitude all the rest of the evening, 
and whenever I said a word to Agnes was sure, with his 
shadowless eyes and cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly 
_ down upon us from behind. 

There were other guests—all iced for the occasion, as it 
struck me, like the wine. But there was one who attracted 
my attention before he came in, on account of my hearing 
him announced as Mr. Traddles! My mind flew back to 
Salem House; and could it be Tommy, | thought, who used 
to draw the skeletons! 

I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual interest. He was 
a sober, steady-looking young man of retiring manners, with 
a comic head of hair, and eyes that were rather wide open; 
and he got into an obscure corner so soon that I had some 
difficulty in making him out. At length I had a good view 
of him, and either my vision deceived me, or it was the old 
unfortunate Tommy. 

1 made my way to Mr. Waterbrook and said that I be- 
lieved I had the pleasure of seeing an old school-fellow 
. there. 

**Indeed?’’ said Mr. Waterbrook, surprised. ‘‘You are 
too young to have been at school with Mr. Henry Spiker?’’ 


440 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘Oh, 1 don’t mean him!’ I returned. ‘‘I mean the gen. 
tleman named Traddles.”’ 

“Oh! Ay, ay! Indeed!’ said my host, with much di- 
minished interest. ‘‘*Possibly.’’ 

‘‘Tf it’s really the same person,’’ said I, glancing toward 
him, ‘‘it was at a place called Salem House where we were 
together, and he was an excellent fellow.’’ 

‘‘Oh, yes. Traddles is a good fellow,’’ returned my host, 
nodding’ his head with an air of toleration. ‘‘Traddles is 
quite a good fellow.”’ 

‘“‘Tt’s a curious coincidence,’’ said I. 

‘‘It is really,’’ returned my host, ‘‘quite a coincidence, 
that Traddles should be here at all, as Traddles was only 
invited this morning, when the place at table, intended to 
be occupied. by Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, became vacant, 
in consequence of his indisposition. A very gentlemanly 
man, Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, Mr. Copperfield.”’ 

IT murmured an assent, which was full of feeling, consid- 
ering that I knew nothing at all about him, and I inquired 
what Mr. Traddles was by profession. : 

‘“Traddles,’’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, ‘‘is a young man 
reading for the bar. Yes. He is quite a good fellow—no- 
body’s enemy but his own.”’ | 

‘‘Ts he his own enemy ?’’ ¢said I, sorry to hear this. 

‘*Well,’’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, pursing up his mouth, 
and playing with his watch-chain, in a comfortable, prosper- 
ous sort of way. ‘‘I should say he was one of those men who 
stand in their own light. Yes, I should say he would never, 
for example, be worth five hundred pound. Traddles was 
recommended to me by a professional friend. Oh, yes. Yes. 
He has a kind of talent, for drawing briefs, and stating a 
case in writing plainly. I am able to throw something in 
Traddles’s way, in the course of the year; something—for 
him—considerable. Oh, yes. Yes.”’ 

I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and 
satisfied manner in which Mr. Waterbrook delivered himself 
of this little word ‘‘Yes,’’ every now and then. There was 


David Copperfield 441 


wonderful expression in it. It completely conveyed the idea 
of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, 
but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the 
heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from 
the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and 
a patron, on the people down in the trenches. 

My reflections on this theme were still in progress when 
dinner was announced. Mr. Waterbrook went down with 
Hamlet’s aunt. Mr. Henry Spiker took Mrs. Waterbrook. 
Agnes, whom I should have liked to take myself, was given 
to a simpering fellow with weak legs. Uriah, Traddles and 
I, as the junior part of the company, went down last, how 
we could. I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might 
have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself 
known to Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great 
fervor; while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction 
and self-abasement that I could gladly have pitched him over 
the banisters. 7 

Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in 
two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, 
in the gloom of Hamlet’s aunt. The dinner was very long, 
and the conversation was about the Aristocracy—and Blood. 
Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us that if she had a weak- 
ness, it was Blood. 

It occurred to me several times that we should have got 
on better if we had not been quite so genteel. We were so 
exceedingly genteel that our scope was very limited. <A Mr. 
and Mrs. Gulpidge were of the party, who had something to 
do at second-hand (at least Mr. Gulpidge had) with the law ~ 
business of the Bank, and what with the Bank, and what 
with the Treasury, we were as exclusive as the Court Cir- 
cular. Toamend the matter, Hamlet’s aunt had the family 
failing of indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in a desultory 
manner by herself, on every topic that wasintroduced. These 
were few enough, to be sure; but as we always fell back upon 
Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as her 
nephew himself. 


442 Works of Charles Dickens 


We might have been a party of Ogres, the conversation 
assumed such a sanguine complexion. 

‘*T confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook’s opinion,’’ said Mr. 
Waterbrook, with his wine-glass at his eye. ‘‘Other things 
are all very well in their way, but give me Blood!’’ 

‘‘Oh! There is nothing,’’ observed Hamlet’s aunt, ‘‘so 
satisfactory to one! .There is nothing that is so much one’s 
beau ideal of—-of all that sort of thing, speaking generally. 








HAMLET’S AUNT BETRAYS THE FAMILY FAILING, AND INDULGES IN A SOLILOQUY ON ‘“* BLOOD” 


There are some low minds (not many, I am happy to believe, 
but there are some) that would prefer to do what J should 
call bow down before idols. Positively idols! Before ser- 
vices, intellect, and so on. But these are intangible points. 
Blood is not so. We see Blood in a nose, and we know it. 
We meet with it in a chin, and we say: ‘There it is! 
That’s Blood!’ It is an actual matter of fact. We point it 
out. It admits of no doubt.’’ 

The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taker 


David Copperfield 443 


Agnes down, stated the question more decisively yet, 1 
thought. 

‘‘Oh, you know, deuce take it,’’ said this gentleman, 
looking round the board with an imbecile smile, ‘‘we can’t 
forego Blood, you know. We must have Blood, you know. 
Some young fellows, you know, may be a little behind their 
station, perhaps, in point of education and behavior, and 
may go a little wrong, you know, and get themselves and 
other people into a variety of fixes—and all that—but deuce 
take it, it’s delightful to reflect that they’ve got Blood in ’em! 
Myself, 1’d rather at any time be knocked down by a man 
who had got Blood in him, than I’d be picked up by a man 
who hadn’t.”’ 

This sentiment, as compressing the general question into 
a nutshell, gave the utmost satisfaction, and brought the 
gentleman into great notice until the ladies retired. After 
that, I observed that Mr. Gulpidge and Mr. Henry Spiker, 
who had hitherto been very distant, entered into a defensive 
alliance against us, the cormmon enemy, and exchanged a 
mysterious dialogue across the table for our defeat and over- 
throw. 

“‘That affair of the first bond for four thousand five hun- 
dred pounds has not taken the course that was expected, 
Spiker,’’ said Mr. Gulpidge. 

‘‘Do you mean the D. of A.’s?’’ said Mr. Spiker. 

‘‘The C. of B.’s?’’ said Mr. Gulpidge. 

Mr. Spiker raised his eyebrows, and looked much con- 
cerned. 

‘‘When the question was referred to Lord—I needn’t . 
name him,’’ said Mr. Gulpidge, checking himself— 

‘‘T understand,’’ said Mr. Spiker, ‘‘N.”? 

Mr. Gulpidge darkly nodded—‘‘was referred to him, his 
answer was, ‘Money, or no release.’ ”’ 

‘‘Lord bless my soul!’’ cried Mr. Spiker. 

*¢ ‘Money, or no release,’ ’’ repeated Mr. Gulpidge, firm- 
ly. ‘‘The next in reversion—you understand me?”’ 

“‘K.,”? said Mr. Spiker, with an ominous look. 


444 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘*__K. then positively refused to sign. He was attended 
at Newmarket for that purpose, and he pointblank refused 
to do it.’”’ 

Mr. Spiker was so interested, that he became quite 
stony. . 

‘So the matter rests at this hour,’’ said Mr. Gulpidge, 
throwing himself back in his chair. ‘‘Our friend Water- 
brook will excuse me if I forbear to explain myself gener- 
ally, on account of the magnitude of the interests involved.”’ 

‘Mr. Waterbrook was only too happy, as it appeared to 
me, to have such interests, and such names, even hinted at 
across his table. He assumed an expression of. gloomy in- 
telligence (though 1 am persuaded he knew no more about 
the discussion than 1 did), and highly approved of the dis- 
cretion that had been observed. Mr. Spiker, after the re- 
ceipt of such a confidence, naturally desired to favor his 
friend with a confidence of his own; therefore the foregoing 
dialogue was succeeded by another, in which it was Mr. 
Gulpidge’s turn to be surprised, and that by another in 
which the surprise came round to Mr. Spiker’s turn again, 
and so on, turn and turn about. All this time we, the out- 
siders, remained oppressed by the tremendous interests in- 
volved in the conversation; and our host regarded us with 
pride, as the victims of a salutary awe and astonishment. 

I was very glad indeed to get upstairs to Agnes, and to 
talk with her in a corner, and to introduce Traddles to her, 
who was shy, but agreeable, and the same good-natured 
creature still. As he was obliged to leave early, on account 
of going away next morning for a month, I had not nearly 
so much conversation with him as I could have wished; but 
we exchanged addresses, and promised ourselves the pleas- 
ure of another meeting when he should come back to town. 
He was greatly interested to hear that 1 knew Steerforth, 
and spoke of him with such warmth that I made him tell 
Agnes what he thought of him. But Agnes only looked at 
me the while, and very slightly shook her head when only I 
observed her. 


David Gopperfield 445 


As she was not among people with whom I believed she 
could be very much at home, I was almost glad to hear that 
she was going away within a few days, though I was sorry 
at the prospect of parting from her again so soon. This 
caused me to remain until all the company were gone. Con- 
versing with her, and hearing her sing, was such a delight- 
ful reminder to me of my happy life in the grave old house 
she had made so beautiful, that I could have remained there 
half the night; but, having no excuse for staying any 
longer, when the lights of Mr. Waterbrook’s society were all 
snuffed out, I took my leave very much against my inclina- 
tion. I felt then, more than ever, that she was my better 
Angel; and if I thought of her sweet face and placid smile, 
as though they had shone on me from some removed being, 
like an angel, I hope | thought no harm. 

I have said that the company were all gone; but 1 ought 
to have excepted Uriah, whom I don’t include in that de- 
nomination, and who had never ceased to hover near us. He 
was close behind me when I went downstairs. He was 
close beside me when I walked away from the house, slowly 
fitting his long skeleton fingers into the still longer fingers of 
a great Guy Fawkes pair of gloves. 

It was in no disposition for Uriah’s company, but in re- 
membrance of the entreaty Agnes had made to me, that 1 
asked him if he would come home to my rooms, and have 
some coffee. 

‘‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,’’ he rejoined—‘‘I beg 
your pardon, Mister Copperfield, but the other comes so 
natural—I don’t like that you should put a constraint upon 
yourself to ask an ’umble person like me to your ’ouse,’’ 

‘‘There is no constraint in the case,’’ said 1. ‘* Will you 
come?”’ | 

*‘T should like to very much,’’ replied Uriah, with a 
writhe. 

‘‘Well, then, come along!’’ said I. 

1 could not help being rather short with him, but he ap- 
peared not to mind it. We went the nearest way, without 


446 Works of Charles Dickens 


conversing much upon the road; and he was so humble in 
respect of those scarecrow gloves, that he was still putting 
them on, and seemed to have made no advance in that labor 
when we got to my place. 

I led him up the dark stairs, to prevent his knocking his 
head against anything, and really his damp cold hand felt 
so like a frog in mine, that I was tempted to drop it and run 
away. Agnes and hospitality prevailed, however, and I con- 
ducted him to my fireside. When I lighted my candles, he 
fell into meek transports with the room that was revealed to 
him; and when I heated the coffee in an unassuming block- 
-tin-vessel in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to prepare it (chief- 
ly, I believe, because it was not intended for the purpose, 
being a shaving-pot, and because there was a patent inven- 
tion of great price mouldering away in the pantry), he pro- 
fessed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have scalded 
him. 

‘‘Oh, really, Master Coppertield—I mean Mister Copper- 
field,’’ said Uriah, ‘‘to see you waiting upon me is what I 
never could have expected. But, one way and another, so 
many things happen to me which I never could have expect- 
ed, I am sure, in my ’umble station, that it seems to rain 
blessings on my ed. You have heard something, I des-say, 
of a change in my expectations, Master Copperfield, Z should 
say, Mister Copperfield ?”’ 

As he sat on my sofa, with his long knees drawn up un- 
der his coffee-cup, his hat and gloves upon.the ground close 
to him, his spoon going softly round and round, his shadow- 
less red eyes, which looked as if they had scorched their 
lashes off, turned toward me without looking at me, the dis- 
agreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils com- 
ing and going with his breath, and a snaky undulation per- 
vading his frame from his chin to his boots, I decided in my 
own mind that I dislhked him intensely. It made me very 
uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I was young then 
and unused to disguise what I so strongly felt. 

‘*You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in 


David Gopperfield 447 


my expectations, Master Copperfield—I should say, Mister 
‘Copperfield?’’? observed Uriah. 

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘‘something.’’ 

“Ah! I thought Miss Agnes would know of it,’’ he qui- 
etly returned. ‘‘I’m glad to find Miss Agnes knows of it. 
Oh, thank you, Master—Mister Copperfield.’’ 

I could have thrown my bootjack at him (it lay ready on 
the rug), for having entrapped me into the disclosure of any- 
thing concerning Agnes, however immaterial. But I only 
drank my coffee. 

‘What a prophet you have shown yourself, Mister Cop- 
perfield,”’ pursued Uriah. ‘‘Dear me, what a prophet you 
have proved yourself to be. Don’t you remember saying to 
me once, that perhaps I should be a partner in Mr. Wick- 
field’s business, and perhaps it might be Wickfield & Heep! 
You may not recollect it; but when a person is ’umble, Mas- 
ter Copperfield, a person treasures such things up.’’ 

“I recollect talking about it,’’ said I, ‘‘though I certainly 
did not think it very likely then.’’ 

“Oh! who would have thought it likely, Mister Copper- 
field!’ returned Uriah, enthusiastically, ‘‘I am sure I didn’t 
myself. I recollect saying with my own lips that I was 
much too ’umble. So I considered myself really and 
truly.”’ 

He sat, with that carved grin on his face, looking at the 
fire, as I looked at him. | 

‘But the ’umblest persons, Master Copperfield,’’ he pres- 
ently resumed, ‘‘may be the instruments of good. Iam glad 
to think I have been the instrument of good to Mr. Wick- 
field, and that I may be more so. Oh, what a worthy man 
he is, Mister Copperfield, but how imprudent he has been!”’ 

‘‘T am sorry to hear it,’’ said I. 1 could not help adding, 
rather pointedly, ‘‘on all accounts.”’ 

‘*Decidedly so, Mister Copperfield,’’ replied Uriah. ‘‘On 
all accounts. Miss Agnes’s above all! You don’t remem- 
ber your own eloquent expressions, Master Copperfield; but 
I remember how you said one day that everybody must ad- 


448 | Works of Charles Dickens 


mire her, and how I thanked you for it? You have forgot 
that, I have no doubt, Master Copperfield?”’ 

‘*No,”’ said I, dryly. 

‘‘Oh, how glad 1 am, you have not!’’ exclaimed Uriah. 
“To think that you should be the first to kindle the sparks of 
ambition in my ’umble breast, and that you’ve not forgot it! 
Oh! Would you excuse me asking for a cup more coffee?’’ 

Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of 
those sparks, and something in the glance he directed at me 
as he said it, had made me start as if I had seen him illumi- 
nated by a blaze of light. Recalled by his request, preferred 
in quite another tone of voice, I did the honors of the shav- 
ing-pot; but I did them with an unsteadiness of hand, a sud- 
den sense of being no match for him, and a perplexed sus- 
picious anxiety as to what he might be going to say next, 
which 1 felt could not escape his observation. 

He said nothing at all. He stirred his coffee round and 
round, he sipped it, he felt his chin softly with his grisly 
hand, he looked at the fire, he looked about the room, he 
grasped rather than smiled at me, he writhed and undulated 
about, in his deferential servility, he stirred and sipped 
again, but he left the renewal of the conversation to me. 

**So Mr. Wickfield,’’ said I, at last, ‘‘who is worth five 
hundred of you—or me;”’ for my life, I think, I could not 
have helped dividing that part of the sentence with an awk- 
ward jerk; ‘“‘has been imprudent, has he, Mr. Heep?”’ 

‘‘Oh, very imprudent indeed, Master Copperfield,’ re- 
turned Uriah, sighing modestly.’ ‘‘Oh, very much so! But 
I wish you’d call me Uriah, if you please. It’s like old 
times.”’ 

“Well, Uriah!’ said I, bolting it out with some difficulty. 

‘*Thank you!’’ he returned, with fervor. ‘‘Thank you, 
Master Copperfield. It’s like the blowing of old breezes or 
the ringing of old bellses to hear you say Uriah. I beg 
your pardon. Was I making any observation?”’ 

‘*About Mr. Wickfield,’’ I suggested. 

*““Oh! Yes, truly,’? said Uriah. ‘‘Ah! Great impru- 


David Gopperfield 449 


dence, Master Copperfield. It’s a topic that I wouldn’t 
touch upon, to any soul but you. Even to you 1 can only 
touch upon it, and no more. If any one else had been in my 
place during the last few years, by this time he would have 
had Mr. Wickfield (oh, what a worthy man he is, Master 
Copperfield, too!) under his thumb. Un—der—his thumb,”’ 
said Uriah, very slowly, as ho stretched out his cruel-looking 
hand above my table, and pressed his own thumb down upon 
it, until it shook, and shook the room. 

If I had been obliged to look at him with his splay foot 
on Mr. Wickfield’s head, I think | could scarcely have hated 
him more. 

‘‘Oh, dear, yes, Master Copperfield,’’ he proceeded in a 
soft voice, most remarkably contrasting with the action of 
his thumb, which did not diminish its hard pressure in the 
least degree, ‘‘there’s no doubt of it. There would have been 
loss, disgrace, I don’t know what all. Mr. Wickfield knows 
it. Iam the ’umble instrument of ’umbly serving him, and 
he puts me on an eminence I hardly could have hoped to 
reach. How thankful should I be!’ With his face turned 
toward me, as he finished, but without looking at me, he 
took his crooked thumb off the spot where he had planted it, 
and slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with it, as 
if he were shaving himself. 

T recollect well how indignantly my heart beat as I saw 
his crafty face, with the appropriately red light of the fire 
upon it, preparing for something else. 

‘*Master Copperfield,’’ he began—‘‘but am I keeping you 
up?" 

““You are not keeping me up. I generally go to bed late.’’ 

“‘Thank you, Master Copperfield! I have risen from my 
’umble station since first you used to address me, it is true; 
but I am ’umble still. 1 hope I never shall be otherwise 
than ’umble. You will not think the worse of my ’umble- 
ness, if I make a little confidence to you, Master Copper- 
field? Will you?’’ 

“Oh, no!’ said I, with an effort. 

Vou. II—(15) 


450 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘Thank you!’ He took out his pocket-handkerchief, 
and began wiping the palms of his hands. ‘‘Miss Agnes; 
Master Copperfield—’’ 

_ Well, Uriah?’’ 

‘‘Oh, how pleasant to be called Uriah spontaneously !’’ he 
cried; and gave himself a jerk like a convulsive fish. ‘‘You 
thought her looking very beautiful to-night, Master Copper- 
field ?”’ 

_“T thought her looking as she always does—superior, in 
all respects, to every one around her,’’ I returned. 

‘Oh, thank-you! It’s so true!’’ he cried. ‘‘Oh, thank 
you very much for that!’’ 

“Not at all,’’? I said, loftily. ‘‘There is no reason why 
you should thank me.”’ 

‘‘Why that, Master Copperfield,” said Uriah, ‘‘is in fact 
the confidence that 1 am going to take the liberty of repos- 
ing. ’Umble as I am,’’ he wiped his hands harder, and 
looked at them and at the fire by turns, ‘‘’umble as my 
mother is, and lowly as our poor but honest roof has ever 
been, the image of Miss Agnes (I don’t mind trusting you 
with my secret, Master Copperfield, for I have always over- 
flowed toward you since the first moment 1 had the pleasure 
of beholding you in a pony-shay) has been in my breast for 
years. Oh, Master Copperfield, with what a pure affection 
do I love the ground my Agnes walks on!’ 

1 believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot 
poker out of the fire, and running him through withit. It 
went from me with a shock, like a ball fired from a rifle; 
but the image of Agnes, outraged by so much as a thought 
of this red-headed animal’s, remained in my mind when I 
looked at him—sitting all awry as if his mean soul griped 
his body—and made me giddy. He seemed to swell and 
grow before my eyes; the room seemed full of the echoes of 
his voice; and the strange feeling (to which, perhaps, no 
one is quite a stranger) that all this had occurred before at 
some indefinite time, and that I knew what he was going to 
say next, took possession of me. 


David Gopperfield 451 


A timely observation of the sense of power that there was 
in his face did more to bring back to my remembrance the 
entreaty of Agnes, in its full force, than any effort 1 could 
have made. Il asked him, with a better appearance of com- 
posure than I could have thought possible a minute before, 
whether he had made his feelings known to Agnes. 

‘‘Oh, no, Master Copperfield!’’ he returned; ‘‘oh, dear, no! 
not to any one but you. You see | am only just emerging 
from my lowly station. I rest a good deal of hope on her 
observing how useful I am to her father (for I trust to be 
very useful to him, indeed, Master Copperfield), and how I 
smooth the way for him, and keep him straight. She’s so 
much attached to her father, Master Copperfield (oh, what a 
lovely thing it is in a daughter!), that I think she may come 
on his account to be kind to me.”’ 

I fathomed the depth of the rascal’s whole scheme, and 
understood why he laid it bare. 

‘If you’ll have the goodness to keep my secret, Master 
Copperfield,’’ he pursued, ‘‘and not, in general, to go against 
me, I shall take it as a particular favor. You wouldn’t wish 
to make unpleasantness. I know what a friendly heart 
you’ve got; but having only known me on my ’umble foot- 
ing (on my ’umblest, I should say, for 1 am very ’umble 
still), you might, unbeknown, go against me rather with 
my Agnes. I call her mine, you see, Master Copperfield. 
There’s a song that says, ‘I’?d crowns resign to call her 
mine!’ 1 hope to do it, one of these days.’’ 

Dear Agnes! So much too loving and too good for any 
one that 1 could think of, was it possible that she was re- 
served to be the wife of such a wretch as this! 

‘‘There’s no hurry at present, you know, Master Copper- 
field,’ Uriah proceeded in his slimy way, as I sat gazing at 
him with this thought in my mind. ‘‘My Agnes is very 
young still; and mother and me will have to work our way 
upards, and make a good many new arrangements, before it 
would be quite convenient. So I shall have time gradually 
to make her familiar with my hopes, as opportunities offer. 


452 Works of Charles Dickens 


Oh, 1’m s0 much obliged to you for this confidence! Oh, it’s 
such a relief, you can’t think, to know that you understand 
our situation, and are certain (as you wouldn’t wish to make 
unpleasantness in the family) not-to go against me!”’ 

He took the hand which I dared not withhold, and hav- 
ing given it a damp squeeze, referred to his pale-faced watch. ; 

‘‘Dear me!’’ he said, ‘‘it’s past one. The moments slip 
away so in the confidence of old times, Master Copperfield, 
that it’s almost half-past one!”’ 

- T answered that I had thought it was later. Not that I 
had really thought so, but because my conversational pow- 
ers were effectually scattered. 

‘‘Dear me!’’ he said, considering. ‘‘The ’ouse that I 
am stopping at—a sort of private hotel and boarding-’ouse, 
' Master Copperfield, near the New River ed—will have gone 
to bed these two hours.”’ 

‘‘T am sorry,’’ I returned, ‘‘that there’s only one bed 
here, and that I—’’ 

‘‘Oh, don’t think of mentioning beds, Master Copper- 
field!’’ he rejoined, ecstatically, drawing up one leg. ‘But 
would you have any objections to my laying down before 
the fire?’’ 

‘“‘Tf it comes to that,”’ A said, ‘‘pray take my bed, and I’ I 
lie down before the fire.’ 

His repudiation of this offer was almost shrill enough, in 
the excess of its surprise and humility, to have penetrated to 
the ears of Mrs. Crupp, then sleeping, 1 suppose, in a distant 
chamber, situated at about the level of low water mark, 
soothed in her slumbers by the ticking of an incorrigible 
clock, to which she always referred me when we had any 
little difference on the score of punctuality, and which was 
never less than three-quarters of an hour too slow, and had 
always been put right in the morning by the best authorities. 
As no arguments I could urge, in my bewildered condition, 
had the least effect upon his modesty in inducing him to 
accept my bedroom, 1 was obliged to make the best arrange- 
ments I could for his repose before the fire. The mattress of 


David @opperfield 453 


the sofa (which was a great deal too short for his lank figure), 
the sofa pillows, a blanket, a table-cover, a clean breakfast- 
cloth, and a greatcoat, made him a bed and covering, for 
which he was more than thankful. Having lent him a 
nightcap, which he put on at once, and in which he made 
such an awful figure that 1 have never worn one since, I 
left him to his rest. 

I never shall forget that night. J never shall forget how 
1 turned and tumbled; how I wearied myself with thinking 
about Agnes and this creature; how I considered what could 
I do, and what ought I to do; how I could come to no other 
conclusion than that the best course for her peace was to do 
nothing, and to keep to myself what I had heard. If I went 
to sleep for a few moments, the image of Agnes with her 
tender eyes, and of her father looking fondly on her, as I 
had so often seen him look, arose before me with appealing 
faces, and filled me with vague terrors. When I awoke, the 
recollection that Uriah was lying in the next room sat heavy 
on me like a waking nightmare, and oppressed me with a 
leaden dread, as if I had had some meaner quality of devil 
for a lodger. 

The poker got into my dozing thoughts besides, and 
wouldn’t come out. I thought, between sleeping and wak- 
ing, that it was still red hot, and I had snatched it out of 
the fire, and run him through the body. I was so haunted 
at last by the idea, though I knew there was ncthing in it, 
that I stole into the next room to look at him. There I saw 
him, lying on his back, with his legs extending to 1 don’t 
know where, gurglings taking place in his throat, stoppages 
in his nose, and his mouth open like a post-office. He was 
so much worse in reality than in my distempered fancy, that 
afterward I was attracted to him in very repulsion, and could 
not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and 
taking another look at him. Still, the long, long night 
seemed heavy and hopeless as ever, and no promise of day 
was in the murky sky. 

When I saw him going downstairs early in the morning 


454 Works of Charles Diekens 


(for, thank Heaven! he would not stay to breakfast), it ap- 
peared to me as if the night was going away in his person. 
When I went out to the Commons, I charged Mrs. Crupp, 
with particular directions, to leave the windows open, that 
my sitting-room might be aired, and purged of his presence. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 
I FALL INTO CAPTIVITY 


I sAwW no more of Uriah Heep until the day when Agnes 
left town. I was at the coach-office to take leave of her and 
see her go; and there was he, returning to Canterbury by the 
same conveyance. It was some small satisfaction to me to 
observe his spare, short-waisted, high-shouldered, mulberry- 
colored greatcoat perched up, in company with an umbrella like 
a small tent, on the edge of the back seat on the roof, while 
Agnes was, of course, inside; but what I underwent in my 
efforts to be friendly with him, while Agnes looked on, per- 
haps deserved that little reéompense. At the coach-window, 
as at the dinner-party, he hovered about us without a mo- 
ment’s intermission, like a great vulture; gorging himself 
on every syllable that 1 said to Agnes, or Agnes said to me. 

In the state of trouble into which his disclosure by my fire 
had thrown me, I had thought very much of the words Agnes 
had used in reference to the partnership. ‘‘I did what 1 hope 
was right. Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa’s 
peace that the sacrifice should be made, I entreated him to 
make it.”’ A miserable foreboding that she would yield to, 
and sustain herself by, the same feeling in reference to any 
sacrifice for his sake had oppressed me ever since. I knew 
how she loved him. I knew what the devotion of her nature 
was. I knew from her own lips that she regarded herself as 
the innocent cause of his errors, and as owing him a great 
debt she ardently desired to pay. I had no consolation in 


David Gopperfieid 455 


seeing how different she was from this detestable Rufus with 
the mulberry-colored greatcoat, for I felt that in the very 
difference between them, in the self-denial of her pure soul 
and the sordid baseness of his, the greatest danger lay. All 
this, doubtless, he knew thoroughly, and had, in his cunning, 
considered well. 

Yet, I was so certain that the prospect of such a sacrifice 
afar off must destroy the happiness of Agnes—and I was so 
sure, from her manner, of its being unseen by her then, and 
having cast no shadow on her yet—that I could as soon have 
injured her as given her any warning of what impended. 
Thus it was that we parted without explanation: she waving 
her hand and smiling farewell from the coach-window, her 
evil genius writhing on the roof, as if he had her in his 
clutches and triumphed. 

I could not get over this farewell glimpse of them fora 
long time. When Agnes wrote to tell me of her safe arrival, 
I was as miserable as when | saw her going away. When- 
ever I fell into a thoughtful state, this subject was sure to 
present itself, and all my uneasiness was sure to be redoubled. 
Hardly a night passed without my dreaming of it. 1t became 
a part of my life, and as inseparable from my life as my own 
head. 

I had ample leisure to refine upon my uneasiness; for 
Steerforth was at Oxford, as he wrote to me, and when 1 
was not at the Commons I was very much alone. I believe 
1 had at this time some lurking distrust of Steerforth. I 
wrote to him most affectionately in reply to his, but I think 
I was glad, upon the whole, that he could not come to Lon- 
don just then. 1 suspect the truth to be, -that the influence 
of Agnes was upon me, undisturbed by the sight of him; and 
that it was the more powerful with me because she had so 
large a share in my thoughts and interest. 

In the meantime, days and weeks slipped away. I was 
articled to Spenlow & Jorkins. I had ninety pounds a year 
(exclusive of my house-rent and sundry collateral matters) 
from my aunt. My rooms were engaged for twelve months 


456 Works of Charies Diekens 


certain, and though I still found them dreary of an evening, 
and the evenings long, I could settle down into a state of 
equable low spirits and resign myself to coffee; which I seem, 
on. looking back, to have taken by the gallon at about this 
period of my existence. At about this time, too, 1 made 
three discoveries: first, that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to 
a curious disorder called ‘‘the spazzums,’’ which was gen- 
erally accompanied with inflammation of the nose, and re- 
quired to be constantly treated with peppermint; secondly, 
that something peculiar in the temperature of my pantry 
made the brandy-bottles burst; thirdly, that 1 was alone in 
the world, and much given to record that cireumstance in 
fragments of English versification. 

On the day when I was articled no festivity took place, 
beyond my having sandwiches and sherry into the office for 
the clerks, and going alone to the theater at night. I went 
to see ‘‘The Stranger’? as a Doctors’ Commons sort of play, 
and was so dreadfully cut up that I hardly knew myself in 
my own glass when 1 got home. Mr. Spenlow remarked, on 
this occasion, when we concluded our business, that he should 
have been happy to have seen me at his house at Norwood to 
celebrate our becoming connected, but for his domestic ar- 
rangements being in some disorder, on account of the expected 
return of his daughter from finishing her education at Paris. 
But he intimated that when she came home he should hope to 
have the pleasure of entertaining me. I knew that he was a 
widower with one daughter, and expressed my acknowledg- 
ments. — | 

Mr. Spenlow was as good as his word. In a week or two 
he referred to this engagement, and said that if I would do 
him the favor to come down next Saturday, and stay till 
Monday, he would be extremely happy. Of course I said 
1 would do him the favor, and he was to drive me down 
in his phaeton, and to bring me back. 

When the day arrived, my very carpet-bag was an object 
of veneration to the stipendiary clerks, to whom the house at 
Norwood was a sacred mystery. One of them informed me 


David Gopperfield 457 


that he had heard that Mr. Spenlow ate entirely off plate and 
china; and another hinted at champagne being constantly on 
draught, after the usual custom of table-beer. The old clerk 
with the wig, whose name was Mr. Tiffy, had been down on 
business several times in the course of his career, and had on 
each occasion penetrated to the breakfast-parlor. He described 
it as an apartment of the most sumptuous nature, and said 
that he had drunk brown Kast India sherry there, of a quality 
so precious as to make a man wink, 

We had an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day— 
about excommunicating a baker who had been objecting in 
a vestry to a paving-rate—and as the evidence was just twice 
the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a calculation I 
made, it was rather late in the day before we finished. How- 
ever, we got him excommunicated for six weeks, and sen- 
tenced in no end of costs; and then the baker’s proctor, and 
the judge, and the advocates on both sides (who were all 
nearly related), went out of town together, and Mr. Spenlow 
and I drove away in a phaeton. 

The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horses 
arched their necks and lifted up their legs as if they knew 
they belonged to Doctors’ Commons. ‘There was a good deal 
of competition in the Commons on all points of display, and 
it turned out some very choice equipages then; though I 
always have considered, and always shall consider, that in 
my time the great article of competition there was starch; 
which I think was worn among the proctors to as great an 
extent as it is in the nature of man to bear. 

We were very pleasant going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave . 
me some hints in reference to my profession. He said it was 
the genteelest profession in the world, and must on no account 
be confounded with the profession of a solicitor; being quite 
another sort of thing, infinitely more exclusive, less mechani- 
cal, and more profitable. We took things much more easily 
in the Commons than they could be taken anywhere else, he 
observed, and that set us, as a privileged class, apart. He 
said it was impossible to conceal the disagreeable fact that 


458 Works of Charles Dickens 


we were chiefly employed by solicitors; but he gave me to 
understand that they were an inferior race of men, univer- 
sally looked down upon by all proctors of any pretensions. 

l asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of 
professional business? He replied that a good case of a dis- 
puted will, where there was a neat little estate of thirty or 
forty thousand pounds, was, perhaps, the best of all. In such 
a case, he said, not only were there very pretty pickings in 
the way of arguments at every stage of the proceedings, and 
mountains upon mountains of evidence on interrogatory and 
counter-interrogatory (to say nothing of an appeal lying, first 
to the Delegates, and then to the Lords); but the costs being 
pretty sure to come out of the estate at last, both sides went 
at it in a lively and spirited manner, and expense was no 
consideration. Then, he launched into a general eulogium 
on the Commons: What was to be particularly admired (he 
said) in the Commons was its compactness. It was the most 
conveniently organized place in the world. lt was the com- 
plete idea of snugness. It lay in a nutshell. For example: 
You brought a divorce case, or a restitution case, into the 
Consistory. Very good. You tried it in the Consistory. 
You made a quiet little round game of it, among a family 
group, and you played it out at leisure. Suppose you were 
not satistied with the Consistory, what did you do then? 
Why, you went into the Arches. What was the Arches? 
The same court, in the same room, with the same bar, and 
the same practitioners, but another judge, for there the 
Consistory judge could plead any court-day as an advocate. 
Well, you played your round game out again. Still you 
were not satisfied. Very good. What did you do then? 
Why, you went to the Delegates. Who were the Delegates? 
Why, the Ecclesiastical Delegates were the advocates with- 
out any business, who had looked on at the round game 
when it was playing in both courts, and had seen the cards 
shuffled, and cut, and played, and had talked to all the 
players about it, and now came fresh, as judges, to settle 
the matter to the satisfaction of everybody! Discontented 


David Copperfield 459 


people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness 
in the Commons, and the necessity of reforming the Com- 
mons, said Mr. Spenlow, solemnly, in conclusion; but when 
the price of wheat per bushel had been highest, the Commons 
had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his 
heart, and say this to the whole world: ‘‘Touch the Com- 
mons, and down comes the country!’ 

I listened to all this with attention; and though, I must 
say, | had my doubts whether the country was quite as much 
obliged to the Commons,as Mr. Spenlow made out, I respect- 
fully deferred to his opinion. That about the price of wheat 
per bushel I modestly felt was too much for my strength, and 
quite settled the question. I have never, to this hour, got 
the better of that bushel of wheat. It has re-appeared to 
annihilate me, all through my life, in connection with all 
kinds of subjects. I don’t know now, exactly, what it has to 
do with me, or what right it has to crush me, on an infinite 
variety of occasions; but’ whenever I see my old friend the 
bushel brought in by the head and shoulders (as he always 
is, 1 observe), I give up a subject for lost. 

‘This is a digression. J was not the man to touch the 
~ Commons and bring down the country. I submissively ex- 
pressed by my silence, my acquiescence in all I had heard 
from my superior in years and knowledge, and we talked 
about ‘‘The Stranger’’ and the Drama, and the pair of horses, 
- until we came to Mr. Spenlow’s gate. 

There was a lovely garden to Mr. Spenlow’s house; and 
though that was not the best time of the year for seeing a _ 
garden, it was so beautifully kept that 1 was quite enchanted. 
There was a charming lawn, there were clusters of trees, and 
there were perspective walks that I could just distinguish in 
the dark, arched over with trellis-work, on which shrubs and 
flowers grew in the growing season. ‘‘Here Miss Spenlow 
walks by herself,’’ I thought. ‘‘Dear me!’’ 

We went into the house, which was cheerfully lighted up, 
and into a hall where there were all sorts of hats, caps, great- 
coats, plaids, gloves, whips, and walking-sticks. ‘‘Where is 


460 Works of Charles Dickens 


Miss Dora?’”’? said Mr. Spenlow to the servant. ‘‘Dora!”’ 
I thought. ‘‘What a beautiful name!’’ 

We turned into a room near at hand (I think it was the 
identical breakfast-room made memorable by the brown East 
India Sherry), and I heard a voice say, ‘‘Mr. Copperfield, my 
daughter Dora, and my daughter Dora’s confidential friend !”’ 
It was, no doubt, Mr. Spenlow’s voice, but I didn’t know it, 
and | didn’t care whose it was. All was over in a moment. 
I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive andaslave. I 
loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! 

She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a 
Sylph, 1 don’t know what she was—anything that no one 
ever saw, and everything than everybody wanted. I was 
swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was 
no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; 
1 was gone, headlong, before 1 had sense to say a word to 
her. 

“7,” observed a well-remembered voice, when I had 
bowed and murmured something, ‘‘have seen Mr. Copper- 
field before.”’ 

The speaker was not Dora. No; the confidential friend, 
Miss Murdstone! 

1 don’t think I was much astonished. To the best of my 
judgment, no capacity of astonishment was left in me. There 
was nothing worth mentioning in the material world, but 
Dora Spenlow, to be astonished about. I said, ‘‘How do you 
do, Miss Murdstone? I hope you are well.’’ She answered, 
‘*Very well.’’ I said, ‘‘How is Mr. Murdstone?’’? She re- 
plied, ‘‘My brother is robust, 1 am obliged to you.”’ 

Mr. Spenlow, who, I suppose, had been surprised to see 
us recognize each other, then put in his word. 

‘*T am glad to find,’’ he said, ‘‘Copperfield, that you and 
Miss Murdstone are already acquainted.”’ 

‘‘Mr. Copperfield and myself,’’ said Miss Murdstone, with 
severe composure, ‘‘are connections. We were once slightly 
acquainted. It was in his childish days. Circumstances 
have separated us since. I should not have known him.”’ 


David @opperfield 461 


I replied that I should have known her, anywhere. Which 
was true enough. 

**Miss Murdstone has had the goodness,’’ said Mr. Spen- 
low, to me, ‘‘to accept the office—if I may so describe it—of 
my daughter Dora’s confidential friend. My daughter Dora 
having, unhappily, no mother, Miss Murdstone is obliging 
enough to become her companion and protector.”’ 

A passing thought occurred to me that Miss Murdstone, 
like the pocket instrument called a life-preserver, was not so 
much designed for purposes of protection as of assault But 
as I had none but passing thoughts for any subject save Dora, 
I glanced at her, directly afterward, and was thinking that 
I saw, in her prettily pettish manner, that she was not very 
much inclined to be particularly confidential to her companion 
and protector, when a bell rang, which Mr. Spenlow said was 
the first dinner-bell, and so carried me off to dress. 

The idea of dressing one’s self, or doing anything in the 
way of action, in that state of love, was a little too ridiculous. 
I could only sit down before my fire, biting the key of my 
carpet-bag, and think of the captivating, girlish, bright-eyed, 
lovely Dora. Whataform she had, what a face she had, 
what a graceful, variable, enchanting manner! 

The bell rang again so soon that 1 made a mere scramble 
of my dressing, instead of the careful operation 1 could have 
wished under the circumstances, and went downstairs. There 
was some company. Dora was talking to an old gentleman 
with a gray head. Gray as he was—and a great-grandfather 
into the bargain, for he said so—l was madly jealous of him. 

What a state of mind I was in! I was jealous of every- 
body. 1 couldn’t bear the idea of anybody knowing Mr. 
Spenlow better than I did. It was torturing to me to hear 
them talk of occurrences in which 1 had had no share. When 
a most amiable person, with a highly-polished bald head, asked 
me across the dinner-table if that were the first occasion of my 
seeing the grounds, 1 could have done anything to him that 
was savage and revengeful. 

I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I have 


462 Works of Charles Diekens 


not the least idea what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My 
impression is, that 1 dined off Dora entirely, and sent away 
half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next to her. I talked 
to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest 
little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, 
that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was 
rather diminutive altogether. So much the more precious, 
I thought. 

When she went out of the room with Miss Murdstone (no 
other ladies were of the party), I fell into a reverie, only dis- 
turbed by the cruel apprehension that Miss Murdstone would 
disparage me to her. The amiable creature with the polished 
head told me a long story, which I think was about garden- 
ing. I think I heard him say ‘‘my gardener’’ several times. 
I seemed to pay the deepest attention to him, but I was wan- 
dering in a garden of Eden all the while with Dora. 

My apprehensions of being disparaged to the object of my 
engrossing affection were revived when we went into the 
drawing-room, by the grim and distant aspect of Miss Murd- 
stone. But Iwas relieved of them in an unexpected manner. 

‘‘David Copperfield,’’ said Miss Murdstone, beckoning me 
aside into a window. ‘‘A word.”’ 

1 confronted Miss Murdstone alone. 

‘‘David Copperfield,’’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘‘l need not 
enlarge upon family circumstances. They are not a tempting 
subject.’”’ 

‘‘Kar from it, ma’am,”’ I returned. 

‘‘Kar from it,’’ assented Miss Murdstone. ‘‘I do not wish 
to revive the memory of past differences, or of past outrages. 
I have received outrages from a person—a female, I am sorry 
to say, for the credit of my sex—who is not to be mentioned 
without scorn and disgust; and therefore I would rather not 
mention her.”’ 

1 felt very fiery on my aunt’s account; but I said it weuld 
certainly be better, if Miss Murdstone pleased, not to men- 
tion her. I could not hear her disrespectfully mentioned, I 
added, without expressing my opinion in a decided tone. 


David @opperfield 463 


Miss Murdstone shut her eyes, and disdainfully inclined 
her head; then, slowly opening her eyes, resumed: 

“‘David Copperfield, I shall not attempt to disguise the 
fact that I formed an unfavorable opinion of you in your 
childhood. 1t may have been a mistaken one, or you may 
have ceased to justify it. That is not in question between us 
now. 1 belong to a family remarkable, 1 believe, for some 
firmness; and I am not the creature of circumstance or 
change. 1 may have my opinion of you. You may have 
your opinion of me.”’ 

I inclined my head in my turn. 

*“‘But it is not necessary,’’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘‘that 
these opinion should come into collision here. Under exist- 
ing circumstances, it is as well on all accounts that they 
should not. As the chances of life have brought us together 
again, and may bring us together on other occasions, 1 would 
say let us meet here as distant acquaintances. Family cir- 
cumstances are a sufficient reason for our only meeting on 
that footing, and it is quite unnecessary that either of us 
should make the other the subject of remark. Do you ap- 
prove of this?”’ 

‘‘Miss Murdstone,’’ I returned, ‘‘I think you and Mr. 
Murdstone used me very cruelly, and treated my mother 
with great unkindness. I shall always think so as long as 
Llive. But I quite agree in what you propose.”’ 

Miss Murdstone shut her eyes again, and bent her head. 
Then, just touching the back of my hand with the tips of 
her cold, stiff fingers, she walked away, arranging the little 
fetters on her wrists and round her neck; which seemed to. 
be the same set, in exactly the same state, as when I had 
seen her last. These reminded me, in reference to Miss 
Murdstone’s nature, of the fetters over a jail-door; suggest- 
ing on the outside, to all beholders, what was to be expected 
within. 

All I know of the rest of the evening is, that I heard the 
empress of my heart sing enchanted ballads in the French 
language, generally to the effect that, whatever was the 


464 Works of Charles Diekens 


matter, we ought always to dance, Ta ra la, Ta ra la! ac- 
companying herself on a glorified instrument, resembling a 
guitar. That I was lost in blissful delirium. That I refused 
refreshment. That my soul recoiled from punch particular- 
ly. That when Miss Murdstone took her into custody and 
led her away, she smiled and gave me her delicious hand, 
That I caught a view of myself in a mirror, looking perfect- 
ly imbecile and idiotic. That I retired to bed in a most 
maudlin state of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble 
infatuation. 

It was a fine morning, and early, and i thought I would 
go and take a stroll down one of those wire-arched walks, 
and indulge my passion by dwelling on her image. On my 
way through the hall I encountered her little dog, who was 
called Jip—short for Gipsy. I approached him tenderly, for 
1 loved even him; but he showed his whole set of teeth, got 
under a chair expressly to snarl, and wouldn’t hear of the 
least familiarity. 

The garden was cool and solitary. I walked about, won- 
dering what my feelings of happiness would be, if I could 
ever become engaged to this dear wonder. As to marriage, 
and fortune, and all that, I believe 1 was almost as innocent- 
ly undesigning then, as when I loved little Em’ly. To be 
allowed to call her ‘‘Dora,’’ to write to her, to dote upon and 
worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with 
other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the 
summit of human ambition—I am sure it was the summit of 
mine. ‘There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical 
young spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all this 
still, that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollec- 
tion of it, let me laugh as I may. 

T had not been walking long, when I turned a corner, and 
met her. I tingle again from head to foot as my recollection 
turns that corner, and my pen shakes in my hand. 

‘*You—are—out early, Miss Spenlow,”’ said I. 

‘‘Tt’s so stupid at home,’ she replied, ‘‘and Miss Murd- 
stone is so absurd. She talks such nonsense about its being 


David Ropperfield 465 


necessary for the day to be aired, before I come out. Aired!’’ 
(She laughed here in the most melodious manner.) ‘‘Ona 
Sunday morning, when I don’t practice, I must do some- 
thing. So I told papa last night I must come out. Besides, 
it’s the brightest time of the whole day. Don’t you think 
so?”’ 

I hazarded a bold flight, and said (not without stammer- 
ing) that it was very bright to me then, though it had been 
very dark to me a minute before. 

*‘Do you mean a compliment?’ said Dora, ‘‘or that the 
weather has really changed?’ 

I stammered worse than before in replying that I meant 
no compliment, but the plain truth; though I was not aware 
of any change having taken place in the weather. 1t was in 
the state of my own feelings I added bashfully—to clinch the 
explanation. 

I never saw such curls—how could 1, for there never were 
such curls!—as those she shook out to hide her blushes. As 
to the straw hat and blue ribbons which was on the top of 
the curls, if I could only have hung it up in my room in 
Buckingham Street, what a priceless possession it would 
have been. 

‘‘You have just come home from Paris,”’ said I. 

*“Yes,’’ said she. ‘‘Have you ever been there?’’ 

“€No,’’ 

*‘Oh! IT hope you’ll gosoon! You would like it so much!’ 

Traces of deep-seated anguish appeared in my counte- 
nance. That she should hope | would go, that she should 
think it possible I could go, was insupportable. J depreci- 
ated Paris; I depreciated France. I said I wouldn’t leave 
England under existing circumstances for any earthly con- 
sideration. Nothing should induce me. In short, she was 
shaking the curls again when the little dog came running 
along the walk to our relief, 

He was mortally jealous of me, and persisted in barking 
at me. She took him up in her arms—oh, my goodness!— 
and caressed him, but he insisted upon barking still. He 


466 Works of Charles Dickens 


wouldn’t let me touch him when I tried; and then she beat 
him. It increased my sufferings greatly to see the pats she 
gave him for punishment on the bridgo of his blunt nose, 
while he winked his eyes, and licked her hand, and still 
growled within himself like a little double-bass. At length 
he was quiet—well he might be with her dimpled chin upon 
his head !—and we walked away to look at a greenhouse. 

‘“‘You are not very intimate with Miss Murdstone, are 
you?’’ said Dora.—‘‘ My pet.”’ 

(The last two words were to the dog. Oh, if they had 
only been to me!) 

‘‘No,’”’ L replied. ‘‘Not at all so.”’ 

‘“‘She is a tiresome creature,’’? said Dora, pouting. “‘I 
can’t think what papa can have been about, when he chose 
such a vexatious thing to be my companion. Who wants a 
* protector? I am sure J don’t want a protector. Jip can 
protect me a great deal better than Miss Murdstone—can’t 
you, Jip, dear?”’ 

He only winked lazily, when she kissed his ball of a 
head. 

‘*Papa calls her my confidential friend, but I am sure she 
is no such thing—is she, Jip? We are not going to confide 
in such cross people, Jip and I. We mean to bestow our 
confidence where we like, and to find out our own friends, 
instead of having them found out for us—don’t we, Jip?”’ 

Jip made a comfortable noise, in answer, a little likea 
tea-kettle when it sings. As for me, every word was a new 
heap of fetters, riveted above the last. 

‘It is very hard, because we have not a kind mamma, 
that we are to have, instead, a sulky, gloomy old thing like 
Miss Murdstone always following us about—isn’t it, Jip? 
Never mind, Jip. We won’t be confidential, and we’ll make 
ourselves as happy as we can in spite of her, and we’ll tease 
her, and not please her—won’t we, Jip?”’ 

If it had lasted any longer, I think I must have gone 
down on my knees on the gravel, with the probability before 
me of grazing them, and of being presently ejected from the 


David Copperfield 467 


premises besides. But, by good fortune the greenhouse was 
not far off, and these words brought us to it. 

It contained quite a show of beautiful geraniums. We 
loitered along in front of them, and Dora often stopped to 
admire this one or- that one, and | stopped to admire the 
same one, and Dora, laughing, held the dog up childishly, 
to smell the flowers; and if we were not all three in Fairy- 
land, certainly J was. The scent of a geranium leaf, at this 
day, strikes me with a half-comical, half-serious wonder as 
to what change has come over me in a moment; and then I 
see a straw hat and blue ribbons, and a quantity of curls, 
and a little black dog being held up, in two slender arms, 
against a bank of blossoms and bright leaves. 

Miss Murdstone had been looking for us. She found us 
here; and presented her uncongenial cheek, the little wrin- 
kles in it filled with hair powder, to Dora to be kissed. Then 
she took Dora’s arm in hers, and marched us in to breakfast 
as if it were a soldier’s funeral. 

How many cups of tea I drank, because Dora made it, I 
don’t know. But I perfectly remember that I sat swilling 
tea until my whole nervous system, if I had had any in those 
days, must have gone by the board. By-and-by we went to 
church. Miss Murdstone was between Dora and me in the 
pew; but I heard her sing, and the congregation vanished. 
A sermon was delivered—about Dora, of course—and I am 
afraid that is all I know of the service. 

We had a quiet day. No company, a walk, a family din- 
ner of four, and an evening of Jooking over books and pict- 
ures; Miss Murdstone, with a homily before her, and her 
eye upon us, keeping guard vigilantly. Ah! little did Mr. 
Spenlow imagine, when he sat opposite to me after dinner 
that day, with his pocket-handkerchief over his head, how 
fervently I was embracing him, in my fancy, as his son-in- 
law. Little did he think, when I took leave of him at 
night, that he had just given his full consent to my being 
engaged to Dora, and that I was invoking blessings on his 
head. 


468 Works of Charles Diekens 


We departed early in the morning, for we had a Salvage 
case coming on in the Admiralty Court, requiring a rather 
accurate knowledge of the whole science of navigation, in 
which (as we couldn’t be expected to know much about those 
matters in the Commons) the judge had entreated two old 
Trinity masters, for charity’s sake, to come and help him 
out. Dora was at the breakfast-table to make the tea again, 
however; and 1 had the melancholy pleasure of taking off 
my hat to her in the phaeton, as she stood on the doorstep 
with Jip in her arms. 

What the Admiralty was to me that day; what nonsense 
1 made of our case in my mind, as I listened to it; how I 
saw ‘‘DoRA’’ engraved upon the blade of the silver oar 
which they lay upon the table, as the emblem of that high 
jurisdiction; and how I felt when Mr. Spenlow went home 
without me (I had had an insane hope that he might take me 
back again), as if I were a mariner myself, and the ship to 
which I belonged had sailed away and left me on a desert 
island; I shall make no fruitless effort to describe. If that 
sleepy old court could rouse itself, and present in any visible 
form the day dreams I have had in it about Dora, it would 
reveal my truth. 

1 don’t mean the dreams that I dreamed on that day 
alone, but day after day, from week to week, and term to 
term. I went there, not to attend to what was going on, 
but to think about Dora. If ever I bestowed a thought upon 
the cases, as they dragged their slow length before me, it 
was only to wonder, in the matrimonial cases (remembering 
Dora) how it was that married people could ever be other- 
wise than happy; and, in the Prerogative cases, to consider, 
if the money in question had been left to me, what were the 
foremost steps I should immediately have taken in regard to 
Dora. Within the first week of my passion, | bought four 
sumptuous waistcoats—not for myself; J had no pride in 
them; for Dora—and took to wearing straw-colored kid 
gloves in the streets, and laid the foundations of all the corns 
[have ever had. If the boots I wore at that period could 


David Gopperfield 469 


only be produced and compared with the natural size of my 
feet, they would show what the state of my heart was in a 
most affecting manner. 

And yet, wretched cripple as I made myself by this act 
of homage to Dora, I walked miles upon miles daily in the 
hope of seeing her. Not only was I soon as well known on 
the Norwood Road as the postman on that beat, but I per- 
vaded London likewise. I walked about the streets where 
the best shops for ladies were, I haunted the Bazaar like an 
unquiet spirit, 1 fagged through the park again and again, 
long after I was quite knocked up. Sometimes, at long in- 
tervals and on rare occasions, I saw her. Perhaps | saw her 
glove waved in a carriage window; perhaps I met her, 
walked with her and Miss Murdstone a little way, and spoke 
to her. In the latter case I was always very miserable after- 
ward, to think that I had said nothing to the purpose; or 
that she had no idea of the extent of my devotion, or that 
she cared nothing about me. I was always looking out, as 
may be supposed, for another invitation to Mr. Spenlow’s 
house. I was always being disappointed, for I got none. 

Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration; for 
when this attachment was but a few weeks old, and I had 
not had the courage to write more explicitly even to Agnes 
than that I had been to Mr. Spenlow’s house, ‘‘whose fam- 
ily,’’ I added, ‘‘consists of one daughter’’—I say Mrs. Crupp 
must have been a woman of penetration, for, even in that 
early stage, she found it out. She came up to me one even- 
ing, when I was very low, to ask (she being then afflicted 
with the disorder I have mentioned) if I could oblige her 
with a little tincture of cardamums mixed with rhubarb, 
and flavored with seven drops of the essence of cloves, which 
was the best remedy for her complaint; or, if I had not such 
a thing by me, with a little brandy, which was the next 
best. It was not, she remarked, so palatable to her, but it 
was the next best. As I had never even heard of the first 
remedy, and always had the second in the closet, I gave 
Mrs. Crupp a glass of the second, which (that I might have 


ATO Works of Charles Dickens 


no suspicion of its being devoted to any improper use) she 
_ began to take in my presence. 

‘‘Cheer up, sir,’? said Mrs. Crupp, ‘‘I can’t abear to see 
you so, sir; I’m a mother myself.”’ 

I did not quite perceive the application of this fact to 
myself, but 1 smiled on Mrs. Crupp as benignly as was in 
my power. 

‘‘Come, sir,’? said Mrs. Crupp. ‘‘Excuse me. I know 
what it is, sir. There’s a lady in the case.”’ 

‘‘Mrs. Crupp?”’ 1 returned, reddening. 

‘‘Oh, bless you! Keep a good heart, sir!’’ said Mrs. 
Crupp, nodding encouragement. ‘‘Never say die, sir! If 
She don’t smile upon you, there’s a many as will. You’rea 
young gentleman to be smiled on, Mr. Copperfull, and you 
must learn your walue, sir.’’ | 

Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull; firstly, no 
doubt, because it was not my name; and, secondly, I am in- 
clined to think, in some indistinct association with a wash- 
ing-day. 

‘What makes you suppose there is any young lady in the 
case, Mrs. Crupp?’’ said I. 

‘*Mr. Copperfull,’’ said Mrs. Crupp, with a great deal of 
feeling, ‘‘I’m a mother myself.’’ 

For some time Mrs. Crupp could only lay her hand upon 
her nankeen bosom, and fortify herself against returning 
pain with sips of her medicine. At length she spoke again. 

‘‘When the present set were took for you by your dear 
aunt, Mr. Copperfull,’’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘‘my remark were 
I had now found summun I could care for. ‘Thank Ev’in!’ 
were the expression, ‘I have now found summun I can care 
for!’—You don’t eat enough, sir, nor yet drink.”’ | 

‘Ts that what you found your supposition on, Mrs. 
Crupp?”’ said 1. 

‘‘Sir,’’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching to 
severity, ‘‘I’ve laundressed other young gentlemen besides 
yourself. A young gentleman may be over-careful of him- 
self, or he may be under-careful of himself. He may brush 


David @opperfield 471 


his hair too regular, or too unregular. He may wear his 
boots much too large for him, or much too small. That is 
according as the young gentleman has his original character 
formed. But let him go to which extreme he may, sir, 
there’s a young lady in both of ’em.”’ 

Mrs. Crupp shook her head in such a determined manner 
that I had not an inch of vantage-ground left. 

“It was but the gentleman which died here before your- 
self,’? said Mrs. Crupp, ‘‘that fell in love—with a barmaid— 
and had his waistcoats took in directly, though much swelled 
by drinking.”’ 

‘*Mrs. Crupp,’’ said I, ‘‘I must beg you not to connect 
the young lady in my case with a barmaid, or anything of 
that sort, if you please.’’ 

*“Mr. Copperfull,’’ returned Mrs. Crupp. ‘‘I’m a mother 
myself, and not likely. I ask your pardon, sir, if I intrude. 
1 should never wish to intrude where | were not welcome. 
But you are a young gentleman, Mr. Copperfull, and my 
adwice to you is to cheer up, sir, to keep a good heart, and 
to know your own walue. If you was to take to something, 
sir,’’? said Mrs. Crupp, ‘‘if you was to take to skittles, now, 
which is healthy, you might find it divert your mind and do 
you good.”’ 

With these words, Mrs. Crupp, affecting to be very care- 
ful of the brandy—which was all gone—thanked me with a 
majestic curtsey, and retired. As her figure disappeared 
into the gloom of the entry, this counsel certainly presented 
itself to my mind in the light of a slight liberty on Mrs. 
Crupp’s part; but, at the same time, 1 was content to receive » 
it, in another point of view, as a word to the wise, and a 
warning in future to keep my secret better. 


4%2 Works of Charles Dickens 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 
TOMMY TRADDLES 


Ir may have been in consequence of Mrs. Crupp’s advice, 
and perhaps, for no better reason than because there was a 
certain similarity in the sound of the words skittles and 
Traddles, that it came into my head, next day, to go and 
look after Traddles. The time he had mentioned was more 
than out, and he lived in a little street near the Veterinary 
College at Camden Town, which was principally tenanted, 
as one of our clerks who lived in that direction informed me, 
by gentlemen students, who bought live donkeys, and made 
experiments on those quadrupeds in their private apartments. 
Having obtained from this clerk a direction to the academic ~ 
grove in question, 1 set out, the same afternoon, to visit my 
old schoolfellow. 

I found that the street was not as desirable a one as I 
could have wished it to be, for the sake of Traddles, The 
inhabitants appeared to have a propensity to throw any little 
trifles they were not in want of.into the road-—which not 
only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy, too, on account of 
the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable 
either, for 1 myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a 
black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various stages of decom- 
position, as 1 was looking out for the number I wanted. 

The general air of the place reminded me forcibly of the 
days when I lived with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. An inde- 
scribable character of faded gentility that attached to the 
house [ sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in 
the street—though they were all built on one monotonous 
pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy 
who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out 
of his cramped brick and mortar pothooks—reminded me 
still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. Happening to arrive 


David @opperfield 473 


at the door as it was opened to the afternoon milkman, I was 
reminded of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber more forcibly yet. 

‘‘Now,’’ said the milkman to a very youthful servant- 
girl. ‘‘Has that there little bill of mine been heard on?’’ 

**Oh, master says he’ll attend to it immediate,’’ was the 
reply. 

‘*Becausé,’’ said the milkman, going on as if he had-re- 
ceived no answer, and speaking, as | judged from his tone, 
rather for the edification of somebody within the house than 
of the youthful servant—an impression which was strength- 
ened by his manner of glaring down the passage—‘‘ Because 
that there little bill has been running so long that I begin to 
believe it’s run away altogether, and never won’t be heerd 
of. Now, l’m not a going to stand it, you know,”’ said the 
milkman, still throwing his voice into the house, and glaring 
down the passage. t 

As to his dealing in the mild article of milk, by-the-by, 
there never was a greater anomaly. His deportment would 
have been fierce in a butcher or a brandy merchant. 

The voice of the youthful servant became faint, but she 
seemed to me, from the action of her lips, again to murmur 
that it would be attended to immediate. : | 

“*T tell you what,’’ said the milkman, looking hard at her 
for the first time, and taking her by the chin, ‘‘are you fond 
of milk?”’ 

**Yes, I likes it,’’ she replied. 

*‘Good,’’ said the milkman. ‘‘Then you won’t have none 
to-morrow. D’ye hear? Nota fragment of milk you won’t 
have to-morrow.”’ 

1 thought she seemed, upon the whole, relieved, by the 
prospect of having any to-day. The milkman, after shaking 
his head at her, darkly, released her chin, and with anything 
rather than good-will opened his can, and deposited the usual 
quantity in the family jug. This done, he went away, mut- 
tering, and uttered the cry of his trade next door in a vindic- 
tive shriek. 

**Does Mr. Traddles live here?’’ I then inquired. 


4AT4 Works of Charles Dickens 


A mysterious voice from the end of the passage replied 
‘*Yes.’? Upon which the youthful servant replied ‘‘Yes.”’ 

‘Ts he at home?’’ said I. 3 . : 

Again the mysterious voice replied in the affirmative, and 
again the servant echoed it. Upon this, I walked in, and in 
pursuance of the servant’s directions walked upstairs, con- 
scious, as I passed the back parlor door, that I was surveyed 
by a mysterious eye, probably belonging to the mysterious 
voice. 
_ When I got to the top of the stairs—the house was only 
a story high above the ground-floor—Traddles was on the 
landing to meet me. He was delighted to see me, and gave 
me welcome, with great heartiness, to his little room. It 
was in the front of the house, and extremely neat, though 
sparely furnished. It was his only room, I saw; for there 
was a sofa-bedstead in it, and his blacking-brushes and 
blacking were among his books—on the top shelf, behind 
a dictionary. His table was covered with papers, and he 
was hard at work in an old coat. I looked at nothing that 
I know of, but I saw everything, even to the prospect of 
a church upon his china inkstand, as I sat down—and this, 
too, was a faculty confirmed in me in the old Micawber 
times. Various ingenrous arrangements he had made for 
the disguise of his chest of drawers, and the accommodation 
of his boots, his shaving-glass, and so forth, particularly im- 
pressed themselves upon me, as evidences of the same Trad- 
dles, who used to make models of elephants’ dens in writing- 
paper to put flies in, and to comfort himself, under ill-usage, 
with the memorable works of art 1 have so often mentioned. 

In a corner of the room was something neatly covered up 
with a large white cloth. 1 could not make out what that 
was. 

‘‘Traddles,’’ said I, shaking hands with him again, after 
1 had sat down. ‘‘I am delighted to see you.”’ 

‘‘T am delighted to see you, Copperfield,’’ he returned. ‘‘I 
am very glad indeed to see you. It was because | was thor- 
oughly glad to see you when we met in Ely Place, and was 


David Copperfield AVS 


sure you were thoroughly glad to see me, that 1 gave you 
this address instead of my address at chambers.”’ 

“Oh! You have chambers?’’ said I. 

‘*Why, I have the fourth of a room, and a passage, and 
the fourth of a clerk,’’ returned Traddles. ‘‘Three others 
and myself unite to have a set of chambers—to look business- 
like—and we quarter the clerk, too. Half-a-crown a week he 
costs me.”’ 

His old simple character and good temper, and something 
of his old unlucky fortune also, 1 thought, smiled at me in 
the smile with which he made this explanation. 

‘*It’s not because I have the least pride, Copperfield, you 
understand,”’ said Traddles, ‘‘that I don’t usually give my 
address here. It’s only on account of those who come to me, 
who might not like to come here. Jor myself, 1 am fighting 
my way on in the world against difficulties, and it would be 
ridiculous if I made a pretense of doing anything else.”’ 

**You are reading for the bar, Mr. Waterbrook informed 
me?’’ said I. 

‘‘Why, yes,’’ said Traddles, rubbing his hands, slowly, 
over one another, ‘‘I am reading for the bar. The fact is, 
IT have just begun to keep my terms, after rather a long delay. 
It’s some time since | was articled, but the payment of that 
hundred pounds was a great pull. A great pull!’ said Trad- 
dles, with a wince as if he had had a tooth out. 

**Do you know what I can’t help thinking of, Traddles, 
as I sit here looking at you?’’ I asked him. 

‘**No,’’ said he. 

‘*That sky-blue suit you used to wear.”’ 

‘Lord, to be sure!’ cried Traddles, laughing. ‘‘Tight 
in the arms and legs, you know? Dear me! Well! Those 
were happy times, weren’t they ?”’ 

**T think our schoolmaster might have made them happier, 
without doing any harm to any of us, I acknowledge,’’ I 
returned. 

‘‘Perhaps he might,’’ said Traddles. ‘‘But, dear me, 
there was a good deal of fun going on. Do you remember 


9 


476 Works of Charles Dickens 


the nights in the bedroom? When we used to have the sup- 
pers? And when you used to tell the stories? Ha, ha, ha! 
And do you remember when | got caned for crying about 
Mr. Mell? Old Creakle! I should like to see him again, 
too!’ 

‘‘He was a brute to you, Traddles,’’ said I, indignantly; 
for his good-humor made me feel as if I had seen him beaten 
but yesterday. 

‘‘Do you think so?’’ returned Traddles. ‘‘Really? Per- 
haps he was, rather, But it’s all over, a long while. Old 
Creakle!’’ 

‘“You were brought up by an uncle, then?’’ said I. 

‘“‘Of course 1 was!’ said Traddles. ‘‘The one 1 was 
always going to write to. And always didn’t, eh! Ha, ha, 
ha! Yes, I had an uncle then. He died soon after I left 
school.’’ . 

‘Indeed ?”’ 

‘Yes. He was a retired—what do you call it!—draper— 
cloth merchant—and had made me his heir. But -he didn’t 
like me when I grew up.’’ | 

‘‘Do you really mean that?’’ said I. He was so composed 
that 1 fancied he must have some other meaning. 

‘‘Oh dear yes, Copperfield! 1 mean it,’’ replied Traddles. 
‘Tt was an unfortunate thing, but he didn’t like me at all. 
He said I wasn’t at all what he expected, and so he married 
his housekeeper.”’ 

‘‘And what did you do?”’ I asked. 

‘‘T didn’t do anything in particular,’’ said Traddles. ‘‘I 
lived with them, waiting to be put out in the world, un- 
til his gout unfortunately flew to his stomach—and so he 
died, and so she married a young man, and so J wasn’t 
provided for.”’ 

‘*Did you get nothing, Traddles, after all?’’ 

‘‘Oh, dear, yes!’’ said Traddles. ‘‘I got fifty pounds. I ~ 
had never been brought up to any profession, and at first 
I was at a loss what to do for myself. However, 1 began, 
with the assistance of the son of a professional man, who 


David Gopperfield 477 


had been to Salem House—Yawler, with his nose on one side. 
Do you recollect him?”’ 

No. He had not been there with me; all the noses were 
straight in my day. 

‘It don’t matter,’’ said Traddles. ‘‘I began, by means 
of his assistance, to copy law writings. That didn’t answer 
very well; and then I began to state cases for them, and 
make abstracts, and do that sort of work. For I am a plod- 
ding kind of fellow, Copperfield, and had learned the way of 
doing such things pithily. Well! That put it in my head to 
enter myself as a law student, and that ran away with all 
that was left of the fifty pounds. Yawler recommended me 
to one or two other offices, however—Mr. Waterbrook’s for 
one—and 1 got a good many jobs. I was fortunate enough, 
too, to become acquainted with a person in the publishing 
way, who was getting up an Encyclopedia, and he set me 
to work, and indeed”’ (glancing at his table), ‘‘I am at work 
for him at this minute. I am nota bad compiler, Copper- 
field,’? said Traddles, preserving the same air of cheerful con- 
fidence in all he said, ‘‘but I have no invention at all; not 
a particle. J suppose there never was a young man with less 
originality than I have.’’ 

As Traddles seemed to expect that I should assent to this 
as a matter of course, I nodded; and he went on, with the 
same sprightly patience—I can find no better expression—as 
before. 

*“So, by little and little, and not living high, I managed to 
scrape up the hundred pounds at last,’’ said Traddles; ‘‘and 
thank Heaven, that’s paid—though it was—though it certainly 
was,’’ said Traddles, wincing again as if he had had another 
tooth out, ‘‘a pull. 1am living by the sort of work I have 
mentioned, still, and I hope, one of these days, to get con: 
nected with some newspaper, which would almost be the 
making of my fortune. Now, Copperfield, you are so ex- 
actly what you used to be, with that agreeable face, and it’s 
so pleasant to see you, that Ishan’t conceal anything. There- 
fore you must know that I am engaged.”’ 


478 Works of Charles Diekens 


Engaged! Oh, Dora! 

‘‘She is a curate’s daughter,’’ said Traddles; ‘‘one of ten, 
down in Devonshire. Yes!’’ For he saw me glance, invol- 
untarily, at the prospect on the inkstand. ‘‘That’s the — 
church! You come round here, to the left, out of this gate,’’ 
tracing his finger along the inkstand, ‘‘and exactly where I 
hold this pen, there stands the house—facing, you under- 
stand, toward the church.”’ 

The delight with which he entered into these particulars 
did not fully present itself to me until afterward; for my 
selfish thoughts were making a ground-plan of Mr. Spen- 
low’s house and garden at the same moment. 

‘*She is such a dear girl!’ said Traddles. ‘‘A little older 
than me, but the dearest girl! I told you I was going out of 
town? I have been down there. - I walked there, and I 
walked back, and I had a most delightful time! I dare- 
say ours is likely to be a rather long engagement, but ‘our 
motto is ‘Wait and hope!’ We always say that. ‘Wait 
and hope,’ we always say. And she would wait, Copper- 
field, till she was ,sixty—any age you can mention— 
for me!”’ 

Traddles rose from his chair, and, with a triumphant 
smile, put his hand upon the white cloth 1 had observed. 

‘*However,’’ he said, ‘‘it’s not that we haven’t made a 
beginning toward housekeeping. No, no; we have begun. 
We must get on by degrees, but we have begun. Here,’’ 
drawing the cloth off with great pride and care, ‘‘are two 
pieces of furniture to commence with. This flower-pot and 
stand she bought herself. You put that in a parlor window,”’ 
said Traddles, falling a little back from it to survey it with 
the greater admiration, ‘“‘with a plant in it, and—and there 
you are! This little round table, with the marble top (it’s 
two feet ten in circumference), I bought. You want to lay 
a book down, you know, or somebody comes to see you or 
your wife, and wants a place to stand a cup of tea upon, and 
—and there you are again!’’ said Traddles. ‘‘It’s an admi- 
rable piece of workmanship—firm as a rock!’ 


David Copperfield 479 


1 praised them both, highly, and Traddles replaced the 
covering as carefully as he had removed it. 

‘‘It’s not a great deal toward the furnishing,’ said Trad- 
dles, ‘‘but it’s something. The table-cloths, and pillow-cases, 
and articles of that kind, are what discourage me most, Copper- 
field. So does the ironmongery—candle-boxes, and gridirons, 
and that sort of necessaries—because those things tell, and 


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‘* HERE ARE TWO PIECES OF FURNITURE TO COMMENCE WITH” 


mount up. However, ‘wait and hope!’ And I assure you 
she’s the dearest girl!”’ 

‘‘T am quite certain of it,’’ said I. 

‘‘In the meantime,’’ said Traddles, coming back to his 
chair; ‘‘and this is the end of my prosing about myself. I 
get on as well as I can. I don’t make much, but I don’t 
spend much. In general, I board with the people downstairs, 
who are very agreeable people, indeed. Both Mr. and Mrs. 
Micawber have seen a good deal of life, and are excellent 
company.’”’ 


480 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘My dear Traddles!”’ I quickly exclaimed. ‘‘What are 
you talking about!”’ 

Traddles looked at me, as if he wondered what J was 
talking about. 

‘“Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’’ I repeated. ‘‘Why, I am 
intimately acquainted with them!”’ 

An opportune double knock at the door, which I knew 
well from old experience in Windsor Terrace, and which 
nobody but Mr. Micawber could ever have knocked at that 
_door, resolved any doubt in my mind as to their being my | 
old friends. I begged Traddles to ask his landlord to walk 
in. Traddles accordingly did so, over the banister; and Mr. 
Micawber, not a bit changed—his tights, his stick, his shirt- 
collar, and his eye-glass all the same as ever—came into the 
room with a genteel and youthful air. 

‘“‘T beg your pardon, Mr. Traddles,’’ said Mr. Micawber, 
with the old roll in his voice, as he checked himself in hum- 
ming a soft tune. ‘‘I was not aware that there wee any 
individual, alien to this tenement, in your sanctum,’ 

Mr. Micawber slightly bowed to me, and pulled up is 
shirt-collar. 

‘‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’’ said I. 

‘“‘Sir,’? said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘you are exceedingly obliging. 
Tam in statu quo.”’ 

‘And Mrs. Micawber?’’ I pursued. 

‘‘Sir,’? said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘she is also, thank God, tn 
statu quo.”’ 

‘¢And the children, Mr. Micawber?”’ 

“‘Sir,’? said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘I rejoice to reply that they 
are, likewise, in the enjoyment of salubrity.’’ 

All this time Mr. Micawber had not known me in the 
least, though he stood face to face with me. But now, see- 
ing me smile, he examined my features with more attentions 
fell back, cried, ‘‘Is it possible! Havel the pleasure of again 
beholding Copperfield!’’? and shook me by both hands with 
the utmost fervor. 

‘‘Good heaven, Mr. Traddles!’’ said. Mr. Micawber, ‘‘to 


David C@opperfield 3 481 


think that 1 should find you acquainted with the friend of 
my youth, the companion of earlier days! My dear!’ call- 
ing over the banisters to Mrs. Micawber, while Traddles 
looked (with reason) not a little amazed at this description 
of me. ‘‘Here isa gentleman in Mr. Traddles’s apartment 
whom he wishes to have the pleasure of presenting to you, 
my love!’’ 

Mr. Micawber immediately reappeared, and shook hands 
with me again. 

‘‘And how is our good friend, the doctor, Copper- 
field?’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘and all the circle at Canter- 
bury?”’ 

‘*l have none but good accounts of them,”’ said I. 

‘**T ain most delighted to hear it,’’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘‘It 
was at Canterbury where we last met. Within the shadow, 
I may figuratively say, of that religious edifice immortalized 
by Chaucer, which was anciently the resort of Pilgrims from 
the remotest corners of—in short,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘in 
the immediate neighborhood of the Cathedral.”’ 

1 replied that it was. Mr. Micawber continued talking 
as volubly as he could; but not, I thought, without showing, 
by some marks of concern in his countenance, that he was 
sensible of sounds in the next room, as of Mrs. Micawber 
washing her hands, and hurriedly opening and shutting 
drawers that were uneasy in their action. 

‘*You find us, Copperfield,’’ said Mr. Micawber, with one 
eye on Traddles, ‘‘at present established on what may be 
designated as a small and unassuming scale; but, you are 
aware that 1 have, in the course of my career, surmounted 
difficulties and conquered obstacles. You are no stranger 
to the fact that there have been periods of my hfe when 
it has been requisite that I should pause, until certain ex- 
pected events should turn up; when it has been necessary 
that I should fall back, before making what I trust I shall 
not be accused of presumption in terming—a spring. The 
present is one of those momentous stages in the life of man. 
You find me, fallen back, for a spring; and I have every 

Vou. II—(16) 


482 Works of Charles Dickens 


reason to believe that a vigorous leap will shortly be the 
result.”’ 

I was expressing my satisfaction when Mrs. Micawber — 
came in; a little more slatternly than she used to be, or so 
she seemed now, to my unaccustomed eyes, but still with 
some preparation of herself for company, and with a pair 
of brown gloves on. . 

‘*My dear,’’ said Mr. Micawber, leading her toward me. 
‘‘Here is a gentleman of the name of Copperfield, who 
- wishes to renew his acquaintance with you.”’ 

It would have heen better, as it turned out, to have led 
gently up to this announcement; for Mrs. Micawber, being 
in a delicate state of health, was overcome by it, and was 
taken so unwell that Mr. Micawber was obliged, in great 
trepidation, to run down to the water-butt in the backyard 
and draw a basinful to lave her brow with. She presently 
revived, however, and was really pleased to see me. We 
had half-an-hour’s talk, altogether; and I asked her about 
the twins, who, she said, were ‘‘grown great creatures”’; 
and after Master and Miss Micawber, whom she’ described 
as ‘‘absolute giants,’’ but they were not produced on that 
occasion. | 

Mr. Micawber was very anxious that I should stay to 

dinner. 1 should not have been averse to do so, but that 
I imagined 1 detected trouble, and calculation relative to 
the extent of the cold meat, in Mrs. Micawber’s eye. 1 
therefore pleaded another engagement; and observing that 
Mrs. Micawber’s spirits were immediately lightened, I re- 
sisted all persuasion to forego it. 
But I told Traddles, and Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, that 
before I could think of leaving, they must appoint a day 
when they would come and dine with me. The oecupations 
to which Traddles stood pledged, rendered it necessary to 
fix a somewhat distant one; but an appointment was made 
for the purpose, that suited us all, and then I took my 
leave. . e 

Mr. Micawber, under pretense of showing me a nearer 


David Gopperfield 483 


way than that by which I had come, accompanied me to the 
corner of the street, being anxious (he explained to me) to 
say a few words to an old friend, in confidence. 

‘““My dear Copperfield,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘I need 
hardly tell you that to have beneath our roof, under exist- 
ing circumstances, a mind like that which gleams—if I may 
be allowed the expression—which gleams—in your friend 
Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort. With a washerwoman, 
who exposes hard-bake for sale in her parlor window, dwell- 
ing next door, and a Bow Street officer residing over the way, 
you may imagine that his society is a source of consolation 
to myself and to Mrs. Micawber. I am at present, my dear 
Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon commission. 
It is not an avocation of a remunerative description—in other 
words, it does not pay—and some temporary embarrassments 
of a pecuniary nature have been the consequence. Iam, how- 
ever, delighted to add that I have now an immediate prospect 
of something turning up (I am not at liberty to say in what 
direction), which I trust will enable me to provide, perma- 
nently, both for myself and for your friend Traddles, in whom 
I have an unaffected interest. You may perhaps be prepared 
to hear that Mrs. Micawber is in a state of. health which ren- 
ders it not wholly improbable than an addition may be ulti- 
mately made to those pledges of affection which—in short, 
to the infantine group. Mrs. Micawber’s family have been 
so good as to express their dissatisfaction at this state of 
things. 1 have merely to observe that I am not aware it is 
any: business of theirs, and that I repel that exhibition of 
feeling with scorn, and with defiance!”’ 

Mr. Micawber then shook hands with me again, and left 
me. 


434 Works of Charles Dickens 


CHAPTER “TWEN TY-EIGH igs 


MR. MICAWBER’S GAUNTLET 


Untit the day arrived on which I was to entertain my 
newly-found old friends, I lived principally on Dora and 
coffee. In my lovelorn condition, my appetite languished; 
and I was glad of it, for I felt as though it would have been 
an act of perfidy toward Dora to have a natural relish for my 
dinner.. The quantity of walking exercise I took was not in 
this respect attended with its usual consequence, as the dis- 
appointment counteracted the fresh air. I have my doubts, 
too, founded on the acute experience acquired at this period 
of my life, whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can 
develop itself freely in any huinan subject who is always in 
torment from tight boots. I think the extremities require to 
be at peace before the stomach will conduct itself with vigor. 

On the occasion of this domestic little party, I did not re- 
peat my former extensive preparations. I merely provided a 
pair of soles, a small leg of mutton, and a pigeon-pie. Mrs. 
Crupp broke out into rebellion on my first bashful hint in 
reference to the cooking of the fish and joint, and said with a 
dignified sense of injury: ‘‘No! No, sir! You will not.ask 
‘me sich a thing, for you are better acquainted with me than 
to suppose me capable of doing what I cannot do with ampial 
satisfaction to my own feelings!’ But, in the end, a com- 
promise was effected; and Mrs. Crupp consented to achieve 
this feat, on condition that I dined from home for a fort- 
night afterward. 

And here I may remark, that what 1 underwent from 
Mrs. Crupp, in consequence of the tyranny she established 
over me, was dreadful. J never was so much afraid of any 


David Copperfield 485 


one. We made a compromise of everything. If I hesitated, 
she was taken with that wonderful disorder, which was al- 
ways lying in ambush in her system, roady, at the shortest 
notice, to prey upon her vitals. If I rang the bell impatient- 
ly, after half a dozen unavailing modest pulls, and she ap- 
peared at last—which was not by any means to be relied 
upon—she would appear with a reproachful aspect, sink 
breathless on a chair near the door, lay her hand upon her 
nankeen bosom, and become so ill, that I was glad at any 
sacrifice of brandy or anything else, to get rid of her. If 1 
objected to having my bed made at five o’clock in the after- 
noon—which I do still think an uncomfortable arrangement 
—one motion of her hand toward the same nankeen region 
of wounded sensibility was enough to make me falter an 
apology. In short, I would have done anything in an hon- 
orable way rather than give Mrs. Crupp offense; and she 
was the terror of my life. 

I bought a second-hand dumb-waiter for this dinner- 
party, in preference to re-engaging the handy young man; 
against whom I had conceived a prejudice, in consequence 
of meeting him in the Strand, one Sunday morning, in a 
waistcoat remarkably like one of mine, which had been miss- 
ing since the former occasion. The ‘‘young gal’’ was re-en- 
gaged; but on the stipulation that she should only bring in 
the dishes, and then withdraw to the landing-place, beyond 
the outer door; where a habit of sniffing she had contracted 
would be lost upon the guests, and where her retiring on the 
plates would be a physical impossibility. 

Having laid in the materials for a bowl of punch, to be 
compounded by Mr. Micawber; having provided a bottle of 
lavendar-water, two wax candles, a paper of mixed pins, and 
a pin-cushion, to assist Mrs. Micawber in her toilet, at my 
dressingtable; having also caused the fire in my bed-room to 
be lighted for Mrs. Micawber’s convenience; and having 
laid the cloth with my own hands, 1 awaited the result with 
composure. 

At the appointed time, my three visitors arrived together. 


486 Works of Charles Dickens 


Mr. Micawber with more shirt-collar than usual, and a new 
ribbon to his eye-glass; Mrs. Micawber with her cap in a 
whity-brown paper parcel; Traddles carrying the parcel, and 
supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm. They were all de- 
lighted with my residence. When I conducted Mrs. Micaw- 
ber to my dressing-table, and she saw the scale on which it 
was prepared for her, she was in such raptures that she 
called Mr. Micawber to come in and look. 

‘*My dear Copperfield,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘this is lux- 
urious. This is a way of life which reminds me of the period 
when I was.myself in a state of celibacy, and Mrs. Micaw- 
ber had not yet been solicited to plight her faith at the Hy- 
meneal altar.”’ 

‘‘He means, solicited by him, Mr. Copperfield,’’ said 
Mrs. Micawber, archly. ‘‘He cannot answer for others.”’ 

‘“My dear,’’ returned Mr. Micawber, with sudden serious- 
ness, ‘‘I have no desire to answer for others. 1am too well 
aware that when, in the inscrutable decrees of Fate, you 
' were reserved for mo, it 1s possible you may have been re- 
served for one, destined, after a protracted struggle, at 
length to fall a victim to pecuniary involvements of a com- 
plicated nature. 1 understand your allusion, my love. I re- 
eret it, but I can bear it.’’ | 

‘*Micawber!’’ exclaimed Mrs. Micawber, in tears. ‘‘ Have 
I deserved this! I, who never have deserted you; who never 
will desert you, Micawber.”’ 

**My love,’’ said Mr. Micawber, much affected, “‘you will 
forgive, and our old and tried friend Copperfield will, I am 
sure, forgive, the momentary laceration of a wounded spirit, 
made sensitive by a recent collision with the Minion of Power 
—in other words, with a ribald Turncock attached to the 
water-works—and will pity, not condemn, its excesses.’’ 

Mr. Micawber then embraced Mrs. Micawber, and pressed 
my hand; leaving me to infer from this broken allusion that 
his domestic supply of water had been cut off that afternoon, 
in consequence of default in the payment of the company’s 
rates. 


David @opperfield 487 


To divert his thoughts from this melancholy subject, I 
informed Mr. Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of 
punch, and led him to the lemons. His recent despondency, 
not to say despair, was gone in a moment, I never saw a 
man so thoroughly enjoy himself: amid the fragrance of 
lemon-peel and sugar, the odor of burning rum, and the 
steam of boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon. 
It was wonderful to see his face shining at us out of a thin. 
cloud of these delicate fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and 
tasted, and looked as if he were making, instead of punch, a 
fortune for his family down to the latest posterity. As to 
Mrs. Micawber, I don’t know whether it was the effect of 
the cap, or the lavender-water, or the pins, or the fire, or 
the wax-candles, but she came out of my room, comparative- 
ly speaking, lovely. And the lark was never gayer than 
that excellent woman. 

I suppose—I never ventured to inquire, but I suppose— 
that Mrs. Crupp, after frying the soles, was taken ill. Be- 
cause we broke down at that point. The leg of mutton came 
up very red within, and very pale without—besides having 
a foreign substance of a gritty nature sprinkled over it, as 
if it had had a fall into the ashes of that remarkable kitchen 
fire-place. But we were not in a condition to judge of this 
fact from the appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as the 
*‘young gal’’ had dropped it all upon the stairs—where it re- 
mained, by the bye, in a long train, until it was worn out. 
The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie; the 
crust being like a disappointing head, phrenologically speak- 
ing—full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular un- 
derneath. In short, the banquet was such a failure that 1 
should have been quite unhappy—about the failure, I mean, 
for I was always unhappy about Dora—if I had not been re- 
lieved by the great good-humor of my company, and ey a 
bright suggestion from Mr. Micawber. 

‘“My dear friend Copperfield,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘ac 
eidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in 
families not regulated by that pervading influence which 


488 Works of Charles Dickens 


sanctifies while it enhances the—a—I would say, in short, by 
the influence of woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they 
may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with 
philosophy. If you will allow me to take the liberty of re- 
marking that there are few comestibles better, in their way, 
than a Devil, and that I believe, with a little division of 
labor, we could accomplish a good one if the young person 
in. attendance could produce a gridiron, I would put it to 
you, that this little misfortune may be easily repaired.”’ 

There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morn- 
ing rasher of bacon was cooked. We had it in, in a twink- 
ling, and immediately applied ourselves to carrying Mr. Mi- 
cawber’s idea into effect. The division of labor to which he 
had referred was this: Traddles cut the mutton into slices; 
Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of this sort to per- 
fection) covered them with pepper, mustard, salt, and cay- 
enne; I put them on the gridiron, turned them with a fork, 
and took them off, under Mr. Micawber’s direction; and 
Mrs. Micawber heated, and continually stirred, some mush- 
room ketchup in a little saucepan. When we had slices 
enough done to begin upon, we fell-to, with our sleeves still 
tucked up at the wrists, more slices sputtering and blazing 
on the fire, and our attention divided between the mutton on 
our plates and the mutton then preparing. 

What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of 
it, the bustle of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, 
the frequent sitting down to dispose of it as the crisp slices 
eame off the gridiron hot and hot, the being so busy, so 
flushed with the fire, so amused, and in the midst of such a 
tempting noise and savor, we reduced the leg of mutton to 
the bone. My own appetite came back miraculously. I am 
ashamed to record it, but 1 really believe I forgot Dora for a 
little while. I am satisfied that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber 
could not have enjoyed the feast more if they had sold a bed 
to provide it. Traddles laughed as heartily, almost the whole 
time, as he ate and worked. Indeed we all did, all at once; 
and I daresay there never was a greater success. 


David Gopperfield 489 


We were at the height of’ our enjoyment, and were all 
busily engaged, in our several departments, endeavoring to 
bring the last batch of slices to a state of perfection that 
should crown the feast, when I was aware of a strange pres- 
ence in the room, and my eyes encountered those of the 
staid Littimer, standing hat in hand before me. 

‘‘What’s the matter?’’ I involuntarily asked. 

‘‘T beg your pardon, sir, I was directed to come in. Is 
my master not here, sir?’’ 

SEN GO. 22 

‘‘Have you not seen him, sir?’’ 

‘No; don’t you come from him?”’ 

‘‘Not immediately so, sir.”’ 

‘‘Did he tell you you would find him here?’’ 

‘‘Not exactly so, sir. But I should think he might be 
here to-morrow, as he has not been here to-day.”’ 

‘Ts he coming up from Oxford?”’ 

‘*I beg, sir,’’ he returned, respectfully, ‘‘that you will be 
seated, and allow me to do this.’? With which he took the 
fork from my unresisting hand, and bent over the gridiron, 
as if his whole attention were concentrated on it. 

We should not have been much discomposed, I daresay, 
by the appearance of Steerforth himself, but we became in a 
moment the meekest cf the meek before his respectable serv- 
ing man. Mr. Micawber, humming a tune to show that he 
was quite at ease, subsided into his chair, with the handle of 
a hastily concealed fork sticking out of the bosom of his 
coat, as if he had stabbed himself. Mrs. Micawber put on | 
her brown gloves, and assumed a genteel languor. Traddles 
ran his greasy hands through his hair, and stcod it bolt up- 
right, and stared in confusion on the tablecloth. As for me 
1 was a mere infant at the head of my own table; and hardly 
ventured to glance at the respectable phenomenon, who had 
come from heaven knows where to put my establishment 
to rights. 

Meanwhile he took the mutton off the gridiron, and grave- 
ly handed it round. We all took some, but our appreciation 


490 Works of Charles Dickens 


of it was gone, and we merely made a show of eating it. As 
we severally pushed away our plates, he noiselessly removed 
them, and set on the cheese. He took that off, too, when it 
was done with; cleared the table; piled everything on the 
dumb-waiter; gave us our wine-glasses; and, of his own ac- 
cord, wheeled the dumb-waiter into the pantry. All this 
was done in a perfect manner, and he never raised his eyes 
from what he was about. Yet, his very elbows, when he 
had his back toward me, seemed to teem with the expression 
_ of his fixed opinion that 1 was extremely young. 

‘‘Can I do anything more, sir?’’ 

I.thanked him and said No; but would he take no dinner 
himself? . 

‘‘None; I am obliged to you, sir.’’ 

‘‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?”’ 

‘*] beg your pardon, sir.”’ 

‘‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford ?”’ 

‘‘T should imagine that he might be here to-morrow, sir, 
I rather thought he might have been here to-day, sir. The 
mistake is mine, no doubt, sir.’’ 

‘‘Tf you should see him first—’’ said I. 

‘Tf you'll excuse. me, sir, I don’t think I shall see him 
first.’ 

‘‘In case you do,”’ said I, ‘‘pray say that I am sorry he 
was not here to-day, as an old schoolfellow of his was here.”’ 

‘‘Indeed, sir!’’ and he divided a bow between me and 
Traddles, with a glance at the latter. | 

He was moving softly to the door, when, in a forlorn 
hope of saying something naturally—which I never could, to 
this man—l said: 

‘Oh! Littimer!”’ 

eerpilidce 

‘‘Did you remain long at Yarmouth that time?”’ 

‘*Not particularly so, sir.”’ | 

‘*You saw the boat completed?”’ 

‘Yes, sir. I remained behind on purpose to see the boat 
completed.”’ 


Dauid Copperfield 491 


“‘l know.’’ He raised his eyes to mine respectfully. 
**Mr. Steerforth has not seen it yet, I suppose?”’ 

‘I really can’t say, sir. I think—but I really can’t say, 
sir. I wish you good-night, sir.’’ 

He comprehended everybody present in the respectful 
bow with which he followed these words, and disappeared. 
My visitors seemed to breathe more freely when he was gone; 
but my own relief was very great, for besides the constraint, 
arising from that extraordinary sense of being at a disad- 
vantage which I[ always had in this man’s presence, my con- 
science had embarrassed me with whispers that I had mis- 
trusted his master, and I could not repress a vague uneasy 
dread that he might find it out. How was it, having so lit- 
tle in reality to conceal, that I always dd feel as if this man 
were finding me out? 

Mr. Micawber roused me from this reflection, which was 
blended with a certain remorseful apprehension of seeing 
Steerforth himself, by bestowing many encomiums on the 
absent Littimer as a most respectable fellow, and a thorough- 
ly admirable servant. Mr. Micawber, 1 may remark, had 
taken his full share of the general bow, and had received it 
with infinite condescension. 

**But punch, my dear Copperfield,’’ said Mr. Micawber, 
tasting it, ‘‘like time and tide, waits for no man. Ah! it is 
at the present moment in high flavor. My love, will you 
give me your opinion?”’ 

Mrs. Micawber pronounced it excellent. 

‘‘Then I will drink,’’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘‘if my friend 
Copperfield will permit me to take that social liberty, to the 
days when my friend Copperfield and myself were younger, 
and fought our way in the world side by side. I may say, 
of myself and Copperfield, in words we have sung together 
before now, that 


e twa’ hae run about the braes 
And pu’d the gowans fine 


—in a figurative point of view—on several occasions. Iam 
not exactly aware,’’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in 


492 Works of Charles Dickens 


his voice, and the old indescribable air of saying something 
genteel, ‘‘what gowans may be, but I have no doubt that 
Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken a pull 
at them, if it had been feasible.’’ 

Mr. Micawber, at the then present moment, took a pull at 
his punch. So we all did—Traddles evidently lost in won- 
dering at what distant time Mr. Micawber and I could have 
been comrades in the battle of the world. 


CA 
Fray pe, a 
Vi A AshdiLa 
9 AAPL SEE 
oni de PE ee 


LER sof 
eae 
bug 
GIG. 
Lisa ps A 


bee tf: 


7 


bh bof 
UP idathe 


Tpiyae 
sari) 
uy Hy! 


a 
ie 





MR. MICAWBER IN HIS ELEMENT 


‘‘Ahem!’’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat, and 
warming with the punch and with the fire. ‘‘My dear, an- 
other glass?”’ 

Mrs. Micawber said it must be very little, but we couldn’t 
allow that,.so it was a glassful. 

‘* As we are quite confidential here, Mr. Copperfield,”’ said 
Mrs. Micawber, sipping her punch, ‘‘Mr. Traddles being a 
part of our domesticity, I should much like to have your 
opinion on Mr. Micawber’s prospects. For corn,’’ said Mrs. 


David Copperfield 493 


Micawber, argumentatively, ‘‘as I have repeatedly said to 
Mr. Micawber, may be gentlemanly, but it is not remunera- 
tive. Commission to the extent of two and ninepence in a 
fortnight cannot, however limited our ideas, be considered 
remunerative.”’ 

We were all agreed upon that. 

‘“‘Then,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, who prided herself on tak- 
ing a clear view of things, and keeping Mr. Micawber 
straight by her woman’s wisdom, when he might otherwise 
go a little crooked, ‘“‘then I ask myself this question. If 
corn is not to be relied upon, what is? Are coals to be relied 
upon? Not at all. We have turned our attention to that 
experiment, on the suggestion of my family, and we find it 
fallacious.’’ 

Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair with his hands in 
his pockets, eyed us aside, and nodded his head, as much as 
to say that the case was very clearly put. | 

‘‘The articles of corn and coals,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, 
still more argumentatively, ‘‘being equally out of the ques- 
tion, Mr. Copperfield, I naturally look round the world, and 
say, ‘What is there in which a person of Mr. Micawber’s 
talent is likely to succeed?’ And I exclude the doing any- 
thing on commission, because commission is not a certainty. 
What is best suited to a person of Mr. Micawber’s peculiar 
temperament is, I am convinced, a certainty.”’ 

Traddles and I both expressed, by a feeling murmur, that 
this great discovery was no doubt true of Mr. Micawber, and 
that it did him much credit. 

‘*T will not conceal from you, my dear Mr. Copperfield,” 
said Mrs. Micawher, ‘‘that J have long felt the Brewing 
business to be particularly adapted to Mr. Micawber. Look 
at Barclay & Perkins! Look at Truman, Hanbury, & 
Buxton! It is on that extensive footing that Mr. Micawber, 
I know from my own knowledge of him, is calculated to 
shine; and the profits, I am told, are e-NoR—mous! But if 
Mr. Micawber cannot get into those firms—which decline to 
answer his letters, when he offers his services even in an in- 


494 Works of Charles Dickens 


ferior capacity—what is the use of dwelling upon that idea? 
None. 1 may have a conviction that Mr. Micawber’s man- 
ners—”’ 

‘‘Hem! Really, my dear,’’ interposed Mr. Micawber. 

“My love, be silent,’? said Mrs. Micawber, laying her 
brown glove on his hand. ‘‘I may have a conviction, Mr. 
Copperfield, that Mr. Micawber’s manners peculiarly qualify 
him for the banking business. J may argue within myself, 
that if J had a deposit at a banking-house, the manners of 
Mr. Micawber, as representing that banking-house, would 
inspire confidence, and must extend the connection. But if 
the various banking-houses refuse to avail themselves of Mr. 
Micawber’s abilities, or receive the offer of them with con- 
tumely, what is the use of dwelling upon that idea? None. 
As to originating a banking-business, I may know that there © 
are members of my family, who, if they chose to place their 
money in Mr. Micawber’s hands, might found an establish- 
ment of that description. But if they do not choose to place 
their money in Mr. Micawber’s hands—which they don’t— 
what is the use of that? Again, I contend that we are no 
further advanced than we were before.”’ 

I shook my head, and said: ‘‘Not a bit.’’ Traddles also 
shook his head, and said: ‘‘Not a bit.”’ 

‘What do I deduce from this?’’ Mrs. Micawber went on 
to say, still with the same air of putting a case lucidly. 
‘(What is the conclusion, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to which 
I am irresistibly brought? Am 1 wrong in saying, it is clear 
that we must live?”’ 

IT answered: ‘‘Not at all!’ and Traddles answered: ‘‘ Not 
at all!’ and I found myself afterward sagely adding, alone, 
that a person must either live or lie. 

‘Just so,’’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘‘It is precisely 
that. And the fact is, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that we can 
not live without something widely different from existing 
circumstances shortly turning up. Now, 1 am convinced, 
myself, and this 1 have pointed out to Mr. Micawber several 
times of late, that things cannot be expected to turn up of 


David Copperfield 495 


themselves. We must, in a measure, assist to turn them up. 
I may be wrong, but I have formed that opinion.”’ 

Both. Traddles and I applauded it highly: 

“Very well,’’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘‘Then what do I 
recommend? Here is Mr. Micawber, with a variety of quali- 


 fications—with great talent—’’ 


‘“Really, my“lIove,’’ said Mr. Micawber. 

*‘Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude. Here is Mr. Mi- 
cawber with a variety of qualifications, with great talent— 
JI should say, with genius, but that may be the partiality of 
a wife—’’ 

Traddles and I both murmured ‘‘No.”’ 

““And here is Mr. Micawber without any suitable posi: 
tion or employment. Where does that responsibility rest? 
Clearly on society. Then I would make a fact so disgrace- 
ful known, and boldly challenge society to set it right. It 
appears to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’’ said Mrs. Micaw- 
ber, forcibly, ‘‘that what Mr. Micawber has to do is to throw 
down: the gauntlet to society, and say, in effect: ‘Show me 
who will take that up. Let the party immediately step for- 
ward.’ ” 

I ventured to ask Mrs. Micawber how this was to be 
done. 

‘‘By advertising,’’ said Mrs. Micawber—“‘‘in all the papers. 
lt appears to me that what Mr. Micawber has to do, in justice 
to himself, in justice to his family, and I will even go so far 
as to say in justice to society, by which he has been hitherto 
overlooked, is to advertise in all the papers; to describe him- 
self plainly as so and so, with such and such qualifications, 
and to put it thus: ‘Now employ me, on remunerative terms, 
and address, post-paid, to W. M., Post Office, Camden 
Town.”’ 

“‘This idea of Mrs. Micawber’s, my dear Copperfield,”’ 
said Mr. Micawber, making his shirt-collar meet in front 
of his chin, and glancing at me sidewise, ‘‘is, in fact, the 
Leap to which I alluded, when I last had the pleasure of 
seeing you.”’ 


496 Works of Charles Dickens 


‘‘ Advertising is rather expensive,’’ 1 remarked, dubi- 


ously. ; 
‘Exactly so!” said Mrs. Micawber, preserving the same 
logical air. ‘‘Quite true, my dear Mr. Copperfield! I have 
made the identical observation to Mr. Micawber. It is for 
that reason especially, that I think Mr. Micawber ought (as 
I have already said, in justice to himself,in justice to his 
family, and in justice to society), to raise a certain sum of 
money—on a bill.”’ 

Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his 
eye glass, and cast his eyes up at the ceiling; but I thought 
him observant of Traddles, too, who was looking at the 
fire. 

‘‘If no member of my family,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, 
possessed of sufficient natural feeling to negotiate that bill— 
I believe there is a better business term to express Hap [ 
mean—’’ 

Mr. Micawber, with his eyes still cast up at the ceiling, 
suggested ‘‘ Discount.”’ 

‘‘To discount that bill,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘‘then my 
opinion is, that Mr. Micawber should go into the City, should 
take that bill into the Money Market, and should dispose of 
it for what he can get. If the individuals in the Money Mar- 
ket oblige Mr. Micawber to sustain a great sacrifice, that is 
between themselves and their consciences. I view it, stead- 
ily, as an investment. J recommend Mr. Micawber, my dear 
Mr. Copperfield, to do the same; to regard it as an invest- 
ment which is sure of return, and to make up his mind to 
any sacrifice.”’ 

I felt, but I am sure I don’t know why, that this was 
self-denying and devoted in Mrs. Micawber, and I| uttered 
a murmur to that effect. Traddles, who took his tone from 
me, did likewise, still looking at the fire. 

‘*‘T will not,’’ said Mrs. Micawber, finishing her punch, 
and gathering her scarf about her shoulders, preparatory to 
her withdrawal to my bedroom; ‘‘I will not protract these 
remarks on the subject of Mr. Micawber’s pecuniary affairs. 





cit 


rate 


David Gopperfield 49% 


At your fireside, my dear Mr. Copperfield, and in the presence 
of Mr. Traddles, who, though not so old a friend, is quite one 
of ourselves, I could not refrain from making you acquainted 
with the course J advise Mr. Micawber to take. 1 feel that 
the time is arrived when Mr. Micawber should exert himself 
and—I will add—assert himself, and it appears to me that 
these are the means. Iamaware that I am merely a female, 
and that a masculine judgment is usually considered more 
competent to the discussion of such questions; still 1 must 
not forget that, when I lived at home with my papa and 
mama, my papa was in the habit of saying, ‘Emma’s form 
is fragile, but her grasp of a subject is inferior to none.’ 
That my papa was too partial I well know; but that he was 
an observer of character in some degree, my duty and my 
reason equally forbid me to doubt.’’ 

With these words, and resisting our entreaties that she 
would grace the remaining circulation of the punch with her 
presence, Mrs. Micawber retired to my bedroom. And really 
1 felt that she was a noble woman—the sort of woman who 
might have been a Roman matron, and done all manner of 
heroic things, in times of public trouble. 

In the fervor of this impression, 1 congratulated Mr. 
Micawber on the treasure he possessed. So did Traddles. 
Mr. Micawber extended his hand to each of us in succession 
and then covered his face with his pocket-handkerchief, 
which 1 think had more snuff upon it than he was aware 
of. He then returned to the punch, in the highest state of 
exhilaration. : 

He was full of eloquence. He gave us to understand that 
in our children we lived again, and that, under the pressure 
of pecuniary difficulties, any accession to their number was 
doubly welcome. He said that Mrs. Micawber had latterly 
had her doubts on this point, but that he had dispelled them 
and reassured her. As to her family, they were totally un- 
worthy of her, and their sentiments were utterly indifferent 
to him, and they might—I quote his own expression—go to 
the devil. 


498 Works -of Charlies Diekens 


Mr. Micawber then delivered a warm eulogy on Traddles. 
He said Traddles’ was a character, to the steady virtues of 
which he (Mr. Micawber) could lay no claim, but which, he 
thanked Heaven, he could admire. He feelingly alluded to 
the young lady, unknown, whom Traddles had honored with 
his affection, and who had reciprocated that affection by hon- 
oring and blessing Traddles with her affection. Mr. Micaw- 
ber pledged her. So did 1. Traddles thanked us both, by 
saying, with a simplicity and honesty I had sense enough 
_to be quite charmed with, ‘‘l am very much obliged to you, 
indeed. And I do assure you she’s the dearest girl!—”’ 

Mr. Micawber took an early opportunity, after that, of 
hinting, with the utmost delicacy and ceremony, at the state 
of my affections. Nothing but the serious assurance of his 
friend Copperfield to the contrary, he observed, could deprive 
him of the impression that his friend Copperfield loved and 
was beloved. After feeling very hot and uncomfortable for 
some time, and after a good deal of blushing, stammer- 
ing, and denying, I said, having my glass in my hand, 
‘‘Well! I would give them D.!’ which so excited and grati- 
fied Mr. Micawber that he ran with a glass of punch into my — 
bedroom, in order that Mrs. Micawber might drink D., who 
drank it with enthusiasm, crying from within, in a shrill 
voice: ‘‘Hear, hear! My dear Mr. Copperfield, 1 am de- 
lighted. Hear!’ and tapping at the wall, by way of 
applause. | 

Our conversation, afterward, took a more worldly turn; 
Mr. Micawber telling us that he found Camden Town incon- 
venient, and that the first thing he contemplated doing, when 
the advertisement should have been the cause of something 
satisfactory turning up, was to move. He mentioned a ter- 
race at the western end of Oxford Street, fronting Hyde Park, 
on which he had always had his eye, but which he did not 
expect to attain immediately, as it would require a large 
establishment. There would probably be an interval, he 
explained, in which he should content himself with the 
upper part of a house, over some respectable place of business 


David Copperfield 49Y 


—say in Piccadilly—which would be a cheerful situation for 
Mrs. Micawber; and where, by throwing out a bow-window, 
or carrying up the roof another story, or making some little 
alteration of that sort, they might live, comfortably and rep- 
utably, for a few years. Whatever was reserved tor him, 
he expressly said, or wherever his aLode might be, we might 
rely on this—there would always be a room for Traddles, and 
a knife and fork for me. We acknowledged his kindness, 
and he begged us to forgive his having launched into 
these practical and business-like details, and to excuse it 
as natural in one who was making entirely new arrange- 
ments in life. 

Mrs. Micawber, tapping at the wall again, to know if tea 
were ready, broke up this particular phase of our friendly 
conversation. She made tea for us in a most agreeable man- 
ner; and, whenever | went near her, in handing about the 
tea-cups and bread-and-butter, asked me, in a_ whisper, 
whether D. was fair, or dark, or whether she was short, or 
tall; or something of that kind, which I think Iliked. After 
tea, we discussed a variety of topics before the fire, and Mrs. 
Micawber was good enough to sing us (in a small, thin, flat 
voice, which I remembered to have considered, when I first 
knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the favorite ballads 
of ‘*The Dashing White Serjeant,’’ and ‘‘ Little Tafflin.’’ For 
both of these songs Mrs. Micawber had been famous when 
she lived at home with her papaand mama. Mr. Micawber 
told us, that when he heard her sing the first one, on the first 
occasion of his seeing her beneath the parental roof, she had 
attracted hisattention in an extraordinary degree; but that 
when it came to ‘‘Little Tafflin,’’ he had resolved to win that 
woman or perish in the attempt. 

It was between ten and eleven o’clock when Mrs. Micaw- 
ber rose to replace her cap in the whity-brown paper parcel 
and to put on her bonnet. Mr. Micawber took the opportu- 
nity of Traddles putting on his greatcoat to slip a letter into 
my hand, with a whispered request that L would read it at 
. my leisure. I also took the opportunity of my holding a 


500 Works of Charles Diekens 


candle over the banisters to light them down, when Mr. 
Micawber was going first, leading Mrs. Micawber, and Trad- 
dles was following with the cap, to detain Traddles for a mo- 
ment on the top of the stairs. 

‘‘Traddles,’’? said I, ‘‘Mr. Micawber don’t mean any 
harm, poor fellow; but, if I were you, 1 wouldn’t lend him 
anything.”’ ? 

‘‘My dear Copperfield,’’ returned Traddles, smiling, ‘‘1 
haven’t got anything to lend.’’ 

‘You have got a name, you know,”’ said I. 

‘‘Oh! you call that something to lend?’’ returned Trad- 
dles, with a thoughtful look. 

‘*Certainly.’’ | 

‘‘Oh!? said Traddles. ‘‘Yes, to bo sure! JI am very 
much obliged to you, Copperfield; but—l am afraid I have 
lent him that already.’’ 

‘*Hor the bill that is to be a certain investment?’’ I in- 
quired. 

‘““No,’’? said Traddles. .‘‘Not for that) one. “Thisis the 
first I have heard of that one. I have been thinking that he 
will most likely propose that one, on the way home. Mine’s 
another.’’ 

‘*T hope there will be nothing wrong about it,”’ said I. 

‘‘] hope not,’’? said Traddles. ‘‘l should think not, 
though, because he told me only the other day that it 
was provided for. That was Mr. Micawber’s expression, 
‘Provided for.’ ” | : 

Mr. Micawber, looking up at this juncture to where we 
were standing, I had only time to repeat my caution. Trad- 
dles thanked me, and descended. But I was much afraid, 
when I observed the good-natured manner in which he went 
down with the cap in his hand, and gave Mrs. Micawber his 
arm, that he would be carried into the Money Market neck 
and heels. 

I returned to my fireside, and was musing, half gravely 
and half laughing, on the character of Mr. Micawber and 
the old relations between us, when I heard a quick step as- | 


David Gopperfield 501 


eending the stairs. At first I thought it was Traddles com- 
ing back for something Mrs. Micawber had left behind; but 
as the step approached, | knew it, and felt my heart beat 
high, and the blood rush to my face, for it was Steerforth’s. 

I was never unmindful of Agnes, and she never left that 
sanctuary in my thoughts—if ! may call it so—where I had 
placed her from the first. But when he entered, and stood 
before me with his hand out, the darkness that had fallen on 
him changed to light, and 1 felt confounded and ashamed of 
having doubted one | loved so heartily. I loved her none the 
less; 1 thought of her as the same benignant, gentle angel in 
my life; 1 reproached myself, not her, with having done him 
an injury; and I would have made him any atonement if I 
had known what to make, and how to make it. ‘ 

‘“Why, Daisy, old boy, dumfounded!’’ laughed Steer- 
forth, shaking my hand heartily, and throwing it gayly 
away. ‘‘Have I detected you in another feast, you Sybarite! 
These Doctors’ Commons fellows are the gayest men in town, 
I believe, and beat us sober Oxford people all to nothing!” 
His bright glance went merrily round the room, as he took 
the seat on the sofa opposite to me, which Mrs. Micawber 
had recently vacated, and stirred the fire into a blaze. 

‘“‘T was so surprised at first,’’ said 1, giving him welcome 
with all the cordiality I felt, ‘‘that 1 had hardly breath to 
greet you with, Steerforth.”’ 

‘“Well, the sight-of me 7s good for sore eyes, as the Scotch 
say,’’ replied Steerforth, ‘‘and so is the sight of you, Daisy, 
in full bloom. How are you, my Bacchanal?”’ rhs 

‘‘T am very well,’’ said I; ‘‘and not at all Bacchanalian 
to-night, though I confess to another party of three.”’ 

‘All of whom I met in the street, talking loud in your 
praise,’’ returned Steerforth. ‘‘Who’s our friend in the 
tights?”’ 

I gave him the best idea I could, in a few words, of Mr. 
Micawber. He laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that 
gentleman, and said he was a man to know, and he must 
know him. 


502 Works of Charles Diekens 


‘*But who do you suppose our other friend is?’’ said I in 
my turn. 

‘‘Heaven knows,’’ said Steerforth. ‘*Not a bore, I hope? 
I thought he looked a little like one.”’ . 

“‘Traddles!’’ I replied, triumphantly. 

‘‘Who’s he?’’ asked Steerforth, in his careless way. 

‘‘Don’t you remember Traddles? Traddles in our room 
at Salem House?’~ 

‘Oh! That fellow!’ siad Steerforth, beating a rath of 
coal on the top of the fire with the poker. ‘‘Is he as soft as 
ever? And where the deuce did you pick him up?”’ 

I extolled Traddles, in reply, as highly as I could; for 1 
felt that Steerforth rather slighted him. Steerforth dismiss- 
ing the subject with a light nod, and a smile, and the remark 
that he would be glad to see the old fellow too, for he had 
always been an odd fish, inquired if I could give him any- 
thing to eat? During most of this short dialogue, when he > 
had not been speaking in a wild, vivacious manner, he had 
sat idly beating on the lump of coal with the poker.—I ob- 
served that he did the same thing while I was getting out 
the remains ot the pigeon-pie, and so forth. 

‘‘Why, Daisy, here’s a supper for a king!’’ he exclaimed, 
starting out of his silence with a burst, and’ taking his seat 
at the table. ‘‘I shall do it justice, for I have come from 
Yarmouth.”’ | 

‘*] thought you came from Oxford?”’ I returned. 

‘Not I,’’ said Steerforth. ‘‘I have been seafaring—better 
employed.’’ 

‘‘Littimer was here to-day, to inquire for you,’’ I 
remarked, ‘‘and I understood him that you were at 
Oxford; though, now I think of it, he certainly did not 
say so.”’ 

‘‘Littimer is a greater fool than I thought him, to have 
been inquiring for me at all,’’ said Steerforth, jovially pour- 
ing out a glass of wine, and drinking tome. ‘‘As to under- 
standing him, you are a cleverer fellow than most of us, 
Daisy, if you can do that.’’ 


David Copperfield 503 


‘*“That’s true, indeed,’’ said I, moving my chair to the 
table. ‘‘So you have been at Yarmouth, Steerforth!’’ inter- 
ested to know all about it. ‘‘Have you been there long?”’ 

‘“No,’’? he returned. ‘‘An escapade of a week or so.”’ 

‘‘And how are they all? Of course, little Emily is not 
married yet?”’ | 

‘‘Not yet. Going to be, I believe—in so many weeks, or 
months, or something or other. I have not seen much of 
’em. By the bye,’’ he laid down his knife and fork, which 
he had been using with great diligence, and began feeling in 
his pockets, ‘‘I have a letter for you.”’ 

‘From whom?’’ 

‘‘Why, from your old nurse,’’ he returned, taking some 
papers out of his breast-pocket. ‘‘ ‘J. Steerforth, Esquire, 
debtor, to the Willing Mind;’ that’s not it. Patience, and 
we'll find it presently. Old what’s-his-name’s in a bad way, 
and it’s about that, I believe.’’ 

‘‘Barkis, do you mean?’’ 

Yes!’ still feeling in his pockets, and looking over their 
contents; ‘‘it’s all over with poor Barkis, I am afraid. I 
saw a little apothecary there—surgeon, or whatever he is— 
who brought your worship into the world. He was mighty ~ 
learned about the case, to me; but the upshot of his opinion 
was, that the carrier was making his last journey rather fast. 
—Put your hand into the breast-pocket of my greatcoat on 
the chair yonder, and I think you’ll find the letter. Is it 
there?’’ 

‘*Here it is,’’ said l. 

‘That’s right!’’ 

It was from Peggotty; something less legible than usual, 
and brief. It informed me of her husband’s hopeless state, 
and hinted at his being ‘‘a little nearer’’ than heretofore, and 
consequently more difficult to manage for his own comfort. 
It said nothing of her weariness and watching, and praised 
him highly. It was written with a plain, unaffected, homely 
piety that I knew to be genuine, and ended with ‘‘my duty 
to my ever darling’’—meaning myself. 


504 Works of Charles Diekens 


While I deciphered it, Steerforth continued to eat and 
drink. 

‘‘Tt’s a bad job,’’ he said, when I had done; ‘‘but the sun 
sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn’t 
be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, 
because that equal foot at all men’s doors was heard knock- 
ing somewhere, every object in this world would slip from 
us. No! Ride on! MRough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if 
that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and 
win the race!’” 

‘*And win what race?’’ said I. 

‘“The race that one has started in,’’ said he. ‘‘Ride on!’’ 

I noticed, I remember, as he paused, looking at me with 
his handsome head a little thrown back, and his glass raised 
in his hand, that, though the freshness of the sea-wind was 
on his face, and it was ruddy, there were traces in it, made 
since I last saw it, as if he had applied himself to some ha- 
bitual strain of the fervent energy which, when roused, was 
so passionately roused within him, I had it in my thoughts 
to remonstrate with him upon his desperate way of pursuing 
any fancy that he took—such as this buffeting of rough seas, 
and braving of hard weather, for example—when my mind 
glanced off to the immediate subject of our conversation again 
and pursued that instead. | 

‘*T tell you what, Steerforth,’’ said I, “‘if your high spirits 
will listen to me—”’ 

“They are potent spirits, and will do whatever you 
like,’’ he answered, moving from the table to the fireside 
again. 

“Then I tell you what, Steerforth, I think I will go down 
and see my old nurse. It is not that 1 can do her any good, 
or render her any real service; but she is so attached to me 
that my visit will have as much effect on her as if I could do 
both. She will take it so kindly that it will be a comfort and 
support to her. It is no great effort to make, | am sure, for 
such a friend as she has been to me. Wouldn’t you goa 
day’s journey if you were in my place?”’ 


David Copperfield 505 


His face was thoughtful, and he sat considering a little 
before he answered, in a low voice: ‘“‘Well! Go. You can 
do no harm.’’ 

‘You have just come back,’’ said I, ‘‘and it would be in 
vain to ask you to go with me?”’ ‘ 

‘*Quite,’’ he returned. ‘‘l am for Highgate to-night. I 
have not seen my mother this long time, and it lies upon my 
conscience, for it’s something to be loved as she loves her 
prodigal son.—Bah! Nonsense!—You mean to go to-mor- 
row, I suppose?’’ he said, holding me out at arms-length, 
with a hand on each of my shoulders. 

‘*Yes, 1 think so.’’ 

**Well, then, don’t go till nextday. Iwanted you to come 
and stay a few days with us. Here I am, on purpose to bid 
you, and you fly off to Yarmouth!’’ 

‘You are a nice fellow to talk of flying off, Steerforth, 
who are always running wild on some unknown expedition 
or other!”’ 

He looked at me for a moment without speaking, and 
then rejoined, still holding me as. before, and giving me 
a shake: 

‘‘Come! Say the next day, and pass as much of to- 
morrow as you can with us! Who knows when we may 
meet again, else? Come! Say the next day! I want 
you to stand between Rosa Dartle and me, and keep us 
asunder.”’ 

**Would you love each other too much, without me?”’ 

‘Yes; or hate,’’ laughed Steerforth; ‘‘no matter which. 
Come! Say the next day!’’ 7 

I said the next day; and he put on his greatcoat and 
lighted his cigar; and set off to walk home. Finding him in 
this intention, I put on my own greatcoat (but did not light 
my own cigar, having had enough of that for one while) and 
walked with him as far as the open road; a dull road, then, 
at night. He was in great spirits all the way; and when we 
parted, and | looked after him going so gallantly and airily 
homeward, I thought of his saying, ‘‘Ride on over all ob- 


506 Works of Charles Diekens 


stacles, and win the race!’’ and wished for the first time that 
he had some worthy race to run. ie. 
I was undressing in my own room, when Mr. Micawber’s 
letter tumbled on the floor. Thus reminded of it, I broke 
the seAl and read as follows. It was dated an hour and a 
half before dinner. “1 am not sure whether I have mentioned 
that, when Mr. Micawber was at any particularly desperate 
crisis, he used a sort of legal phraseology—which he seemed 
to think equivalent to winding up his affairs. 


‘*StrR—for I dare not say my dear Copperfield. 

‘‘Tt is expedient that I should inform you that the under-— 
signed is Crushed. Some flickering efforts to spare you the 
premature knowledge of his calamitous position, you may 
observe in him this day; but hope has sunk beneath the 
horizon, and the undersigned is Crushed. 

‘‘The present communication is penned within the per- 
sonal range (1 cannot call it the society) of an individual, 
in a state closely bordering on intoxication, employed by a 
broker. That individual is in legal possession of the prem- 
ises, under a distress for rent. His inventory includes not 
only the chattels and effects of every description belonging 
to the undersigned, as yearly tenant of this habitation, but 
also those appertaining to Mr. Thomas Traddles, lodger, a 
member of the Honorable Society of the Inner Temple. 

‘If any drop of gloom were wanting in the overflowing 
cup, which is now ‘commended’ (in the language of an im- 
mortal Writer) to the lips of the undersigned, it would be 
found in the fact, that a friendly acceptance granted to the 
undersigned, by the before-mentioned Mr. Thomas Traddles, 
for the sum of £23 4s. 9}d., is over due, and is NOT provided 
for. Also, in the fact, that the living responsibilities cling- 
ing to the undersigned, will, in the course of nature, be in- 
creased by the sum of one more helpless victim; whose mis- 
erable appearance may be looked for—in round numbers—at 
the expiration of a period not exceeding six lunar months. 
from the present date. 


David @opperfield 507 


“After premising thus much, it would be a work of su- 
pererogation to add, that dust and ashes are forever scattered 
“On 
‘The 
‘* Head 
EGIL 
‘WILKINS MICAWBER.”’ 


Poor Traddies! I knew enough of Mr. Micawber by this 
time, to foresee that he might be expected to recover the 
blow; but my night’s rest was sorely distressed by thoughts 
of Traddles, and of the curate’s daughter, who was one of 
ten, down in Devonshire, and who was such a dear girl, and 
who would wait for Traddles (ominous praise!) until she was 
sixty, or any age that could be mentioned. 


(END OF PART ONE OF “DAVID COPPERFIELD”’’) 


END OF VOLUME TWO 























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